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THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 



THE 

CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS 

MIND 

THE RELATIONS OF 

PSYCHOANALYSIS TO EDUCATION 

A Book for Teachers and Parents 



BY 

WILFRID LAY, Ph.D. 

Author of "Man's Unconscious Conflict' 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1919 



^f' 



"gjS 



;^ " 



Copyright, 1919 
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. 



/ / 



©CI.A51500 7 



/ 



It 



CONTENTS 



/cV 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Introduction . ,. . , ,. i 

II The Unconscious Factor ... 13 

III Interplay of Conscious and Uncon- 

scious 49 

IV The Partial Trends . . ., . 89 
V The Mechanisms 99 

VI The Aim OF Education . . .172 

VII Resistance and Transference . . 248 

VIII Emotion 282 

IX Conclusion. Medical Origin . . 321 

Index ....... 327 



THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 



THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS 

MIND 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

A DEEPER knowledge than ever before is now possible 
concerning the nature of the child, and with it the nature 
of the problems of education. By virtue of the new 
knowledge education becomes more nearly a science than 
it has been in the past. The new knowledge is a knowl- 
edge of a hitherto unexplored, or at least unsuccessfully 
explored, stratum of the mind, as evident in the child as 
in the adult, and in the child more controllable than in 
the adult, because more fluent, less fixed and crystallized. 
We knew that children were, in general, more educable 
than adults. Now we know the true cause why, and 
also why some children are more educable than others, 
and why some children do better in school than others, 
or learn as easily in school as they do in life. 

The method of the newer psychology, which is that 
of modern science, is the formation and working out 
of an hypothesis, testing it daily with all the phenomena 
that do not fit into older hypotheses, and ultimately giv- 
ing it up, if another theory more inclusive is found. The 
hypothesis adopted in the newer psychology, which is that 



2 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

tentatively presented here as a basis for a newer science 
of education, is the hypothesis that the unconscious por- 
Hon of each human mind, child or adult, is an activity 
which plays an extremely important, if not an exclusively 
controlling, role in the life of every individual. 

The results of a scientific method of testing this hy- 
pothesis leave nothing, so far, to be desired. Language 
alone is found defective, at times, to give a universally 
comprehensible account of the conclusions which are 
reached. But it is the behef of the present writer that 
so much of value for education, so much that is almost 
imperative for parents and teachers, and even older chil- 
dren to take into account, has been recently discovered, 
that it is quite time for an attempt to be made to put 
this new point of view before all those concerned in the 
bringing up of children. And at no previous time in the 
history of mankind has there been so great a need for 
radical knowledge of mankind as in a time following 
almost universal war. 

The object-matter of the newer knowledge is infin- 
itely broader than any ever studied by the same methods 
before. I say by the same methods, because the existence 
of unconscious mental activity has been guessed for ages, 
and human conduct has always been motivated by the 
unconscious desires; but no conscious cognizance has been 
taken of it except in a very indefinite and unproductive 
way^ 

The object-matter of the newer knowledge is the 
human organism and its modes of functioning, includ- 
ing the unconscious thoughts upon which before the pres- 
ent time no really scientific observations have been made. 
Whether we regard the human organism, with the acts 



INTRODUCTION 3 

and thoughts which express Its functioning, as purely 
physical or purely psychical seems to me to make no dif- 
ference, if we suppose, as we must, that the same nat- 
ural laws are found to exist in both. There do appear, 
to be sure, activities which seem predominantly physical, 
but it would be difficult or impossible to think away the 
mental element of such activities; and there are activities 
which are apparently purely mental, but it is impossible 
to believe that they are really entirely disconnected from 
what we call physical conditions. 

As examples of what might be taken as purely physi- 
cal, because not apparently caused by any conscious 
thoughts, there are the instinctive acts, to which we do 
not attribute any consciousness in animals, because we 
do not notice any in ourselves. Mention will be made 
later of the instincts under two heads of self-preserva- 
tive and race-preservative. 

The modes of functioning of the human organism, 
taken in toto as both mental and physical at the same 
time, and as Including both their conscious and uncon- 
scious manifestations, may be regarded descriptively 
and dynamically. But the description of a state and the 
narration of an act are both needed in the account of 
any human condition at any time. I shall be very little 
concerned with the descriptive end of this matter, ex- 
cept in so far as previous psychology may have been in- 
adequate in its account. The current conceptions of the 
senses, of perception and of the emotions may have to 
be added to, in order to include the unconscious in the 
reckoning. 

The problem of education in general, whether aca- 
demic or other, cannot be adequately solved without In- 



4 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

eluding consideration of the unconscious, and the means 
of education in schools will have to be amplified In order 
to take In this factor which Is now almost universally 
Ignored or " wished onto '' fate. 

The specific problems are those which touch at the 
present time, and with the present school equipment and 
management, the relations between the work, the child, 
the teacher and the parent. In this we deal with con- 
crete realities and Interests which are, from whatever 
angle viewed, admittedly vital. 

The Point of View 

In order to get the point of view of the most modern 
analytic psychology, a view from an angle from which 
education has so far been very little regarded, it will be 
necessary for the reader to accept the fundamental pos- 
tulate of the newer psychology and frankly admit the ex- 
istence in each and every human of an unconscious (some- 
times called subconscious and sometimes co-conscious) 
mentality. This implies not only that each one of us has 
mental states that never enter consciousness but also that 
these unconscious mental states are not only states or con- 
ditions or dispositions, arrangements of something inert, 
but are activities, energies or groups of forces which 
are operating by mechanisms of which only the special 
student knows anything definite at all. The ordinary 
person knows practically nothing of the detailed working 
of these activities, but in his own everyday life he has 
frequent examples of the conscious results produced by 
these elaborate and complicated mechanisms. 

If we do not know the least thing about the part of the 



THE POINT OF VIEW 5 

mind below the horizon of consciousness, below the ter- 
restrial surface above which alone our consciousness is 
able to see what is going on in full view, yet we have many 
times wondered, most of us, what Is beyond that visible 
horizon or what is the nature of the basis on which our 
consciousness sports here and there, like an animate being 
on the face of the earth, and on which we build our mental 
and intellectual structures. The architect of a real build- 
ing knows what kind of soil the foundations are in, and 
makes different arrangements, according to whether he is 
building on sand or rock, or whether, as in the case of 
a well-known New York City hotel, a subterranean river 
has to be provided with an artificial course under the sub- 
cellar. 

One of the commonest illustrations of the flexibility or 
fluidity of the substratum on which our mental life is built 
is the ordinary everyday blunder.* When such a blunder 
involves loss of money or injury to person or property, one 
frequently hears the blunderer repeat to himself: " I can't 
imagine how I ever could have done that 1 What power 
got hold of me to make me so careless as not to see that 
that very thing was most likely to happen? " 

In a number of these blunders, particularly where there 
Is no great loss of any kind, the operating cause of the 
mistake is easily seen, and mosjt_people will readily admit 
^hatit Is caused by an unconscious desire or tendency to do 
the very thing that was done, or leave undone the very 
thing that one forgets to do. 

A person makes an engagement with another person, 

* A careful study of almost any blunder shows first that an activity is 
responsible for it, an activity with which our familiar consciousness had 
nothing whatever to do. 



6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

but does not really wish to keep the appointment. He 
either forgets it, or absent-mindedly puts himself in a 
position where it is impossible for him to keep it. For 
instance, with the conscious purpose of taking dinner 
with a friend in a suburb, I get ready and go down to the 
station and find either that I have missed the last train 
which would get me there in time for dinner, or, by some 
unaccountable ( ?) mental freak, have left my money and 
my check book at home. With conscious irritation but 
with unconscious satisfaction I give it up, and go back to 
my real interests. That is, if I have not totally forgotten 
the engagement or misplaced it mentally to the follow- 
ing day, also a common error. 

A blunder of my own shows in an unmistakable way 
the operation of the unconscious wish. 

I went to a department store and bought $27.47 worth 
of goods and asked to have them charged to my deposit 
account. After reaching home I was informed by my wife 
that she had used it up and I had but a dollar or so on 
deposit there. I immediately wrote a check for $30.00 
and mailed it, on the supposition that they would send the 
goods with a note stating that I had overdrawn. Instead 
they sent the goods collect on delivery. I asked the driver 
if he could take a check. As he consented, I left him at 
the door, wrote a check to R. H. Mercer & Company, 
for $27.47 and handed it to the driver. He looked at it 
to see if it was correct, put it in his book, receipted the 
bill and departed. The next day a special messenger came 
from Mercer's with the check, and asked if I had re- 
ceived the goods and had written that check. I had not 
signed it! Why? Unconsciously I had not wished to 
pay twice or even to do anything that looked like paying 



THE POINT OF VIEW 7 

twice. I should have been much surprised, and possibly 
annoyed at myself, had I been unacquainted with the fact 
that wishes play so important a part in the actions of 
every one of us. It is needless to say that at the time I 
was totally unaware that I had not signed the check. I 
never should have supposed that with a driver from a 
large New York store I could get away with a trick like 
that. 

This unconscious omission on my part Is a very good 
example of an omission caused by the unconscious part of 
my personality. This unconscious factor is an element in 
the constitution of every normal human mind. Its nature 
is described in one word: desire. It constantly desires my 
superiority to my fellow-men in all the relations of life. 
It has been compared to a current of power which is for- 
ever flowing and ready to be applied to any purpose for 
which the human body is a suitable machine. But it lives 
on the gratification which comes from the worsting of any 
contestant, and in a certain sense everything with which 
and everyone with whom I come in contact is taken by it 
as a possible or actual rival. It feeds on a feeling of 
power which it gets by making me overcome or outwit 
my adversaries. If I do not think of this or that man as 
an opponent, my unconscious factor does, and makes me 
unconscious for a brief moment. Of course I was uncon- 
scious to a small degree when I forgot to sign my name to 
that check. I was not in a complete trance, nor did I faint. 
So was the driver unconscious when he looked at the 
check and forgot to note that it was unsigned. Neither 
did he faint nor fall in a trance. He simply did not see 
that the check had no signature, although every part of the 
check was making an impression on his eye. His brain 



8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

was working too. Possibly the unconscious of the driver 
also had its reasons for wishing not to see that the check 
was imperfect. He may have been tired, or he may have 
had a grudge against his employer. The failure to see was 
purely mental. So is the failure of almost all of us purely 
mental when we do not see an error in a printed page. 
If a letter is left out we see it though it is not there. 
If I saw a person in my room though he was not there, we 
should rightly call this vision of mine an hallucination. 
The psychologists call the failure to see a real object a 
negative hallucination. 

Why did I not sign the check? I was not well pleased 
to have my order changed from deposit account to collect 
on delivery. I did not intend to keep even $30.00 on 
deposit at Mercer's, and really did not want to take the 
trouble either to write to them for a check or to go in 
person to draw out the money. So I made a worthless 
check. Every mistake ever made can be explained in the 
same way. Every action that we do is done clearly be- 
cause we have a motive for doing it, a wish to do it. 
Similarly every act that we omit doing has equally a wish 
behind it, a wish not to do that very thing. 

No soldier is excused for omission of a duty because he 
forgot it. It is the same in love as in war. Rosalind in 
As You Like It expresses the principle that a failure to 
do a thing is on account of a wish not to do it, in the fol- 
lowing words : '* Break an hour's promise In love ! He 
that will divide a minute Into a thousand parts, and break 
but a part of the thousandth part of a minute In the affairs 
of love. It may be said of him that Cupid hath clapped 
him o' the shoulder, but I'll warrant him heart-whole." 

In the case of the check unsigned, which is the case of 



THE POINT OF VIEW 9 

forgetting to write a letter of apology, or to post a letter 
already written, or to return a book or an umbrella, the 
wish is transparent enough, when once called to our atten- 
tion. But it was an unconscious wish, or a wish of which 
we were at the time unconscious. It is the same with any- 
one who has " builded better than he knew." His uncon- 
scious has been helping him. 

Another amusing mistake, which I made and which very 
clearly showed what I really wished to do, is as follows. 
I consciously wished to get up one morning at half-past 
six. I told my wife, who, without my knowledge, set the 
alarm clock for that hour. Just before I went to bed my- 
self, I went to the alarm clock, with the conscious purpose 
of setting it to ring at the desired hour. I took the clock 
from the shelf where it was, and turned it around to see 
the dial where the hour of the alarm is adjusted. I saw 
that the indicator pointed to half-past six. So far so good. 
I then looked at the arm which stops the alarm bell from 
ringing or releases it so that it can ring at the proper time. 
It actually pointed to the word " alarm," but I saw only 
the word " silent." Unconsciously I must have made the 
inference that because I saw the word " silent," therefore 
the arm was set for silence, because what I did was to turn 
it. Mentally, that is consciously, at the time I thought 
that I was setting it for alarm, though I really turned it 
off, and went to bed with a perfectly satisfied conscious 
conscience. Next morning I slept till ten minutes of seven 
and awoke with a start. For twenty minutes my uncon- 
scious conscience had been trying to wake me up and had 
succeeded in doing so at such a time as to enable me to 
make, but with a great deal of hurry, the train I wished 
both consciously and unconsciously to catch. I certainly 



10 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

admire the skill of my unconscious in thus giving me a 
little more rest, and letting me get the train just the same. 
What I really wanted to do was just what I did do — 
namely, sleep a little longer, and catch the train too. No 
one will doubt that the influence of the unconscious wish 
which I had tried to repress was sufficient to blind me to 
the real positions of the mechanisms of the alarm clock. 
If I had been asked, just after turning it off, whether I 
had set the alarm, I should certainly have said I had done 
so, and with the clearest conscience. 

In all these errors it is quite clear that there was a 
wish, as evident as the wish-content of Rip Van Winkle's 
otherwise irrelevant statement about his latest drink: 
*' Well, ril not count this one." The unconscious so suc- 
cessfully counts out a great many things which it wills not 
to do or to reckon or to notice, that the things themselves 
simply do not occur to one's mind. And if they do not 
occur, what power will cause us to do those things ? We 
may write them down, but we shall forget to look at the 
memorandum. We may get another person to remind us 
of them, but we shall either not hear him, or not listen to 
him, or shall reason so plausibly to ourselves why the 
whole thing is off anyway, that we shall feel justified, 
even consciously for a while, in not doing It. 

A rower in a swift tide will not go directly across the 
stream if he goes directly across the current, but will 
strike the opposite shore some distance either above or 
below the point opposite which he started, because the cur- 
rent carries him up or down. If a mariner knew nothing 
about the Gulf Stream and attempted to steer across the 
ocean, he might land hundreds of miles from his purposed 
destination. 



THE POINT OF VIEW u 

So In Ignorance of the trend of the unconscious we do 
not arrive whither we aim, and we make all sorts of 
excuses for not doing so. But excuses or no excuses, we 
are forced by these blunders of ours to see that we are to 
a certain extent controlled by a power which is outside of 
our conscious life. It Is not outside of our complete mental 
life any more than the current is outside of the river or 
the Gulf Stream is outside of the ocean. On the other 
hand, the current of the river Is no more Intimately a part 
of the river than is the unconscious a part of my mental 
life as a whole. If we swim In a river that has a current, 
and do not look at the river bank, but only at the water 
near us, we never know the motion of the current. We 
learn that we are being carried several miles an hour by 
the current as we swim in it only after looking at the water 
and the river bank at the same time. In the modern 
analytic psychology we have a means of seeing and esti- 
mating the influence of the mental current in which our 
consciousnesses are swimming. The analogy of many con- 
sciousnesses swimming in the current of one river Is not so 
very misleading, either, as it is found that we are all car- 
ried toward the same goal by the same unconscious trend. 

The Importance of the new viewpoint which includes 
both consciousness and the unconscious is as vital as is 
the necessity that the navigator should allow for currents 
in the ocean when sailing from port to port. And as the 
knowledge of the modern navigator is so faradvancedthat 
the pilot of today can cross the ocean without the wastage 
of a mile, so the modern science of analytic psychology 
has superseded the older doctrine which recognized the 
dynamics of only the conscious mentality. For the vision 
into the lower strata of the mind is a deeper vision, and 



12 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

makes intelligible much of what was paradoxical before. 
For instance, it has shown what the force is, and how it 
operates, which controls that association of ideas, that 
topic which, In the mental science of the past, caused so 
much dispute and produced so much paradox. 

Recognizing, then, the existence and the elemental 
power of the unconscious portion of human mentahty, we 
are in a position to understand the simpler of its 
mechanisms and the effects produced by them in the out- 
ward actions and words of our fellow-beings. 

Summary 

The deeper knowledge of the nature of the individual, 
now for the first time available for teacher and parent, 
takes into consideration the unconscious mental activities, 
and a knowledge of these as they appear In the child is 
now an essential part of the equipment of all who hope 
to do the best work in the bringing up of the young. The 
ordinary blunder Is the clearest illustration of the work- 
ing of the unconscious wish. 



CHAPTER II 

THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR 

As each one of us desires to develop his personality to the 
utmost, and as the recognition of the existence of the 
unconscious element in the mind as a whole at once sug- 
gests a comparison between it and the conscious element, 
it is a natural question to ask what kind of acts are the 
most personal. 

What Act Is Most Personal? 

Which of our acts are most likely to be regarded by 
ourselves as most our own ? Are they those which are the 
most conscious or those which are the most unconscious? 
I think no one will hesitate to say that the acts which we 
perform in a state of semi-consciousness are but half ours, 
but what we perform with the most intense attention, what 
in that sense must be called the most keenly conscious acts, 
are those which we would be most likely to call our own. 
This comes to the same thing as saying that our conscious- 
ness is the most real part of us. And yet, from one point 
of view, our conscious life, in which we seem to take the 
greatest amount of interest, is the smallest part of our 
mental life. I dismiss for the moment the question of 
being able to call by the name mental what is not conscious. 
Modern psychology goes on the principle that it is, and 
that no proper and complete account can be given of the 

13 



14 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

whole mental life which does not give acknowledgment 
to the unconscious. 

But there we have what seems to be a dilemma. What 
is most important is what is most proper to the ego, and 
what is most peculiarly the ego's is consciousness. But 
when compared to the extent and the depth of the uncon- 
scious part of the mind, the conscious part seems most 
unimportant. The truth is that the two parts have dif- 
ferent roles in the drama of life, and that life would be 
incomplete, at least human life would, without both of 
them. Not only does the unconscious mental life play a 
great role in the adjustments which are necessarily made 
between the physical organism and the complexities of 
modern life, in causing adaptations, of which we are 
never conscious, of the various physiological functions to 
the ever changing environment of the life of today, but 
the unconscious wishes are forever causing mental, and 
purely mental, not physiological, changes to take place 
in our minds, of whose results only and not the processes 
we are conscious. 

Not only do we eat new and unaccustomed foods, to 
which our unconscious powers are obliged to adjust our 
digestive apparatus, but we are fed from time to time 
upon new and unaccustomed mental pabulum which 
requires a change in our attitude towards many things. 
In these days we are gradually adapting ourselves mentally 
to the mental atmosphere of a nation at war. The sight 
of multitudes of uniformed men, which would in previous 
years have been extremely exciting to all of us, is now 
seen with quite another feeling, which has been produced 
In us by a great many circumstances to which we do not 
consciously attend, and yet there is a change, and a great 



WE ARE MOST WHAT WE MOST DESIRE 15 

one, which has taken place, in our hearts we call it in 
common parlance. The sight of women running trolley 
cars and elevators and acting as ticket choppers on street 
railway systems, although we do not make much conscious 
comment on it, is nevertheless a factor in the total change 
which is being wrought in our unconscious mentality. 

We Are Most What We Most Desire 

In one sense what we call most our own spir- 
itually is what we have consciously desired most 
and most earnestly striven to secure the attainment 
of. But there are in each one of us a great many 
desires, and strong ones too, of which we are totally 
unconscious. When, after a certain amount of study 
of the newer wish psychology, we come to realize 
how great and how strong these unconscious desires are, 
we for a time begin to think that those are really the most 
peculiarly our own and in a sense ourselves, our real 
selves. Frequently what we have consciously most desired 
we find after its attainment giving us comparatively little 
or no pleasure. We cease to want many things, such as 
riches, when once we have got them. 

If what we most desire is what we ourselves most are, 
then the converse of this proposition is that our desires 
most exactly represent us. Now, if this is true and if it 
is also true that the greater number of our desires are 
absolutely unknown to us, then the conclusion naturally 
follows that of ourselves we know comparatively little. 
It is only the superficial conscious desires that we really 
know, and we are all frequently puzzled by their apparent 
contradictions, not to say by the manifest inability of some 



1 6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

persons to form any idea of why they want this or that 
thing. The phenomenon of the capricious will is quite 
familiar in the case of children. They are expected to 
wish this and that and to be unable to say why. The 
modern form of psychology, sometimes called the wish 
psychology, has given an answer to many of these prob- 
lems. Its answer is that all the unconscious wishes are 
forms of the creative wish for reproduction, and that the 
reason why they have been forced into unconsciousness is 
that things sexual have been tabooed in many civilizations. 
The fact that these desires have been forced into uncon- 
sciousness accounts for the fact that they never enter con- 
sciousness except under disguise. For instance. It has been 
repeatedly shown that among many others the unduly 
strong desire to smoke tobacco or to use certain kinds of 
foods is a compensation for certain wishes for the more 
direct form of physical creativeness against which society 
has set up a strong barrier, and the unconscious, groping 
like a blind animal, or stretching forth like a blade of 
grass under a board toward the light, takes, in its strug- 
gle, an indirect way towards gratification Instead of the 
most direct which has been blocked. 

From the multitudinous prohibitions aimed by society 
at the exploitation of things directly sexual has come a 
sort of Idea, partly conscious and partly unconscious In 
the minds of men and women alike, that such things are 
wicked or sinful or at least dangerous. It Is called play- 
ing with fire, with the Implication that all those who play 
with fire are likely to be burned, furthermore that It Is a 
bad thing In every way to be burned. A state of society 
is conceivable In which such a fear of being burned did not 
exist and In which therefore there would be plenty of 



WE ARE MOST WHAT WE MOST DESIRE 17 

people in evidence who had been burned and been dis- 
figured by their burns. Now, the fact is that in avoiding 
the one kind of burns we are suffering another kind. 
What we are really doing is exchanging a physical for a 
mental burn. There is an absolute law of the conserva- 
tion of energy in the mental as well as in the physical 
world. What we gain in the way of physical advantage 
by our constant curbing of the natural instincts, which is 
the name which we have given to the primordial urge 
toward the maintenance of the individual and of the race, 
is lost in mental advantage. For the absolutely natural 
and therefore wholesome instinct of the girl to be a 
mother is constantly being repressed and in our present 
civilization is in many cases not being replaced in any 
way by a socially valuable substitute. 

There is nothing to which one can devote his or her 
whole heart, to use the common expression, which does 
not enlist all the instincts with which nature has so gener- 
ously provided us; there is, in short, no activity available 
for us that will not leave some of the instinctive desire 
ungratified, unless it enlists the whole of our personality, 
including the unconscious wishes above referred to. In 
other words, unless we can find something to do which 
satisfies our conscious desires, which we have seen above 
to be at best whimsical and illogical, and at the same time 
gratifies in some substitutive form the unconscious wishes, 
which are a very great proportion of the motive force of 
all human action, we shall not be working, or playing 
either for that matter, with our entire available energy, 
and therefore we shall be working at cross-purposes with 
ourselves. 

The unconscious wishes, even if they are not known 



^ 



1 8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

and taken Into account, are nevertheless wishes, just as 
strong as the conscious ones If not much stronger, and 
are operative In our bodies even if they are quite outside 
of our ken. The net result In many Instances Is their 
counteracting the energy of the conscious wishes, and 
nullifying the effect of the latter. That Is the explanation 
of why a great many good things go wrong, and a great 
many otherwise good men too. 

Therefore, we can return to our first question as to 
what kind of deeds are the most personal. If it Is a matter 
of mathematical proportion, such that we could say that 
the wishes having the greatest strength or the greatest 
number best represented the personality of the individual, 
we should be In a position to say that the most conscious 
acts, or those which we feel most consciously desirous of 
performing, are the least our own. They are the fewest 
in number and the weakest In dynamics. On the other 
hand, the unconscious wishes, those indeed which the con- 
scious personality Is constantly striving to repress, are the 
ones which most exactly represent what we really are. 
Now, If this Is the case, as a great many modern psychol- 
ogists firmly believe, and if we therefore really know the 
smallest part of our true nature, It would seem to be a 
great advantage if we should be so trained as to be able to 
learn about these unconscious wishes and learn, too, to be 
able to control them to our own advantage and profit. 
Our present-day education gives us not an Inkling of this 
dual nature of our everyday mind. Only a few advanced 
scientists have taken It into consideration. Some men 
have instinctively gained a control over themselves and 
united their unconscious and their conscious selves, but 
the majority of humans, no matter how speciously civilized 



UNCONSCIOUS ESTIMATION 19 

and conventional they may be, have failed of the spiritual 
union within themselves which Is so rare a thing. 

A curious and interesting corollary to the principle that 
we do not ourselves understand our dual nature Is that 
while the real Mr. A does not thoroughly understand him- 
self, although he thinks he does, Mr. B unconsciously 
appreciates and measures both the conscious and the 
unconscious Mr. A and acts accordingly. The folly of 
others is perfectly patent to everybody. This folly is the 
result of the split between the conscious wishes and the 
unconscious. 

Continuous Unconscious Estimation 

One cannot avoid thinking that the unconscious is con- 
tinually estimating the value, according to its primeval 
standards, of its entire environment. A machine, without 
so-called human Intelligence, would do the same thing, 
if it was furnished with the delicate apparatus which is 
found in the human organism. If we but suppose it to 
contain but the feehng of liking and dislike, and the 
tendency to promote the things that cause the liking and 
reject those which cause the feeling of dislike, we shall 
have the medium for the expression of a great deal of 
action which looks like human Intelligence. Every situa- 
tion will, In Itself, contain the factors whose product will 
be a plus or minus balance with regard to the desirability 
or undeslrabillty of its continuance. If we suppose that 
the situation as a whole includes not only the actual mate- 
rial physical surroundings of the individual. In so far as 
he can sense them, but also the factor contributed by the 
physiological nature of the human body, we shall have 



20 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

all that Is necessary to account for the variability of the 
valuations of human experience. For the same external 
situation will evoke now one and now another reaction; 
It will be desired or It will be disliked not because of any 
Inherent quality In Itself but because of a difference of the 
state of the physical organism of the body. 

If that Is the case, we must Infer that the unconscious, 
which Is the sum total of the reactions to the environment, 
or to the particular situation In which the body finds Itself 
from moment to moment. Is constantly producing tensions 
for or against different factors In the situation, and that 
we, as consciousnesses, are quite unaware of those ten- 
sions. If we meet a person for the first time, and shake 
hands and pass a few remarks about the weather or the 
war, it Is unthinkable that the physical organism, both of 
ourselves and of the person we meet. Is not responding to 
sensations of sight, sound, touch, temperature, odour — In 
fact, every quality which could, and even those which could 
not, be perceived, If the conscious attention were directed 
to them. Although we had formed only a dim Idea of dis- 
like for the person we casually met, and though we might 
later be advised that he was not personally clean, and that 
an odour of perspiration was perceptible about him, we 
could realize that we had ourselves dimly perceived that 
odour, and believe it quite likely that we had formed a 
dislike for him on that account alone. Also while in his 
presence, If some third person had called to our attention 
that the person to whom we were being introduced did 
not look us squarely in the eye, but had a furtive glance, 
we could then consciously note this characteristic, 
although, without this hint from the third person, we 
might have utterly failed to notice It. 



UNCONSCIOUS ESTIMATION 21 

In other words, observation of small details like those 
just mentioned, while it may not be conscious, Is Inevi- 
tably made by the unconscious part of the mind, and is 
made all the time, and includes every detail of every 
situation in which we find ourselves. The proof is that 
we frequently recall characteristics of persons and things 
after we have ceased to have them as a part of our 
immediate situation, and we notice retrospectively that 
they were thus and so. Later conscious observation con- 
firms the facts. Therefore we must suppose that, while 
conscious observation Is very limited In extent, unless one 
is trained in It for some purpose, like the magician 
Houdin, the observations which we make upon persons 
and things are made and completely made, and with no 
effort on our part, — they are automatically registered as 
are the details on a photographic film, but they do not 
enter consciousness. Of course it is a great economy 
that this should be the case. It would be a great waste 
of time for us consciously to make a catalogue of all the 
phases of the appearance and actions of every chance 
person we met and every scene we passed through. But 
it Is quite certain that this is being done in us by our uncon- 
scious all the time, and that only the net results of this 
unconscious observation are occasionally sent up Into con- 
sciousness. In their place, below the threshold of con- 
sciousness, these observations and records are of great 
value, as they enable us to form Intuitive judgments, as 
they are called, which generally come as near to being 
correct as we can consciously make.* 

* Cf . what is said (p. 33 ff.) about unconscious inference. 



22 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Primeval Standards 

I said that the unconscious is making judgments accord- 
ing to primeval standards. A study of the unconscious, 
carried on now for nearly a quarter of a century according 
to psychoanalytical methods, has established the fact that, 
as we go down deeper into the strata of the unconscious, 
we find simpler and more elemental activities. The uncon- 
'' scious is primarily concerned with hunger and sex. With- 
•^ out the barriers which society, even the most barbarous, 
has set up against the unlicensed gratification of these two 
cravings, the individual would at once, and every time in 
every situation, proceed to the satisfaction of both needs. 
It is repulsive to many people to think that the attraction 
which other people have for them, and they themselves 
for the others, is solely and merely a crass sexual one at 
bottom. But if it is a fact, why blink it? It would horrify 
some pretty young woman school teacher to be told that 
the influence of her personality was due primarily to her 
physically sexual charms. It Vv^ould seem to vitiate all 
of the ideals which she had held before her of spiritual 
and intellectual superiority. Does she think that her influ- 
ence over the boys of her class is merely due to her mental 
cleverness? Do I seem cynical in making these remarks? 
If it can be shown to be a fact, does it really spoil the 
whole relation between her and her boy pupils? If It 
could be demonstrated to her beyond possibility of doubt 
that her attraction of girls was a homosexual one, would 
that necessarily make her an undesirable teacher? I think 
not. But I think that her knowledge of these fundamental 
facts will be of service to her in improving the quality of 
her relation between herself and the pupils of both sexes. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR 23 

A teacher should know the tools with which he or she is 
working, and all the means of producing an effect on his 
pupils, and this one of unconscious emotions, or as we 
might call them, to make them more comprehensible, 
unconscious causes for attraction and repulsion, is one of 
the most important questions which comes up in the school- 
room. It is the dynamo which supplies all the power for 
all the machinery in the schoolroom workshop. To 
ignore it is folly. To learn all about it that can be learned 
is the nearest approach that can be made to wisdom. 

The Unconscious Factor {a Specific Instance) 

When the mind is most concentrated upon some one 
thing, say a column of figures which one is adding, there 
are elements in the very object of the keenest attention 
which entirely escape attention — of which the mind is 
totally unconscious. There is a man adding a column of 
figures. Outwardly he is insensible of everything, does 
not know that the weather is hot, that he is physically 
uncomfortable, sitting on a hard seat in a strained posi- 
tion, reading his figures with tired eyes and in an insuf- 
ficent light. He adds the tens and units of each 
J number alternately, from the top downward, 
saying to himself as he does so: 17, 20, 100, 
^^ 102, 152, 161, 221, 225, 305, 308, 348, 351, 
g 411; and then verifies by taking the numbers 
upward, saying: 68, 71, iii, 115, 195, 204, 
^g 264,266,316,319,399,416. It does not agree 
— 7- with the first time, and finally he finds that in 
going downward he has said 351 for 356, hav- 
ing repeated the 3 of 43 (next to last number) instead of 



24 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

saying the 8 of 68. Of the numbers alone he was aware. 
But what made him take the 3 instead of the 8 ? That 
was taking the 3 twice. Had he any special predilection 
for threes? He had. Everyone has, for it is the number 
which has, in the hinterland of the mind, the closest con- 
nection with creativeness, and everyone would be creative. 
Also the number ignored is 5. The number 5 is linked 
in the memory of the race with weakness and solitude. 
Hence it tends to be expunged or forgotten in favour of 
3, wherever there Is a possible alternative between them as 
here. Would this Indicate that mistakes of dropping fives 
are more common than the other errors ? Surely they are, 
when fives are rivals of threes in operations involving 
unconscious mentality. 

This Is a case which I took as an example of the most 
vivid consciousness. The person adding was supremely 
conscious of figures. His whole attention was occupied 
by figures to the exclusion of every other thought and sen- 
sation. If one spoke to him, he would not hear, until 
after he had satisfied himself that his addition was cor- 
rect. Then either of two things might happen. He might 
suddenly become conscious that he had been spoken to, 
and say: " Oh, did you speak? ", or he might have been 
conscious of being spoken to, but voluntarily ignored it, 
till he was through, and then replied to the remark. 

However it may be, we have him In an intensely con- 
scious state, possibly better described as Intensively con- 
scious. But even in that state we find him absolutely 
unconscious, for the time, of the error he has made. He 
Is unconscious not merely of the physical conditions of his 
body, but he Is unconscious of a part of the very thing 
that he Is most conscious of. It may seem a platitude to 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR 25 

say that one is naturally unconscious of mistakes while 
one is making them. Of course, every error is an unwit- 
ting one, else it would be not an error but a voluntary 
perversion or diversion. But why are some wrong 
actions errors and others perversions? Why are they 
not all voluntary perversions? Do we not want, all of us, 
to do what is right, and are we not, all of us, awake, espe- 
cially when we are doing additions? From this it appears 
that one is likely to have unconscious states of mind pep- 
pered through the most conscious states. When the man 
said 351 where he should have said 356 in order to be 
correct, he was fully conscious of saying 351, but he was 
not aware that 351 was not correct. 

We might say that he was fully awake to the number, 
but asleep to its incorrectness. Thus it appears that one 
is awake to a thing, that is, a sensation or a thought, but 
asleep to the relation of the thought and the thing. We 
have here, then, come upon a general rule, namely that 
things (sensations, thoughts) are more easily objects of 
consciousness than relations are. One can be perfectly 
awake to a thing and absolutely anaesthetic to many of 
its relations. 

But there Is more to it than that. The man adding the 
column of figures was wide awake to something that did 
not exist. He was conscious of something that was not 
there. He created it out of nothing. Didn't create any- 
thing? Only said 351? But where did the 351 come 
from? It was formed from the combination of things al- 
ready in his mind. But it came from the repetition of a 3 
instead of the addition of an 8. How could that happen? 
It happened in spite of the presence of the 8. The 8 was 
ignored. The man shut his eyes to it, so to speak. The 



26 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

3 supervened and obliterated the 8. So the prime ques- 
tion is about where the 3 came from. That has been 
hinted at above in saying that in the unconscious hfe of 
the race the number 3 is associated with creativeness. 
For we can easily understand that if there is a general 
tendency, such as creativeness, which is going to make 
itself felt, to push itself forward whenever it can, and add 
its colour, as it were, to every expression of thought, it 
will always be present in every thought in whatever 
strength it can. 

If, for instance, there is a word which we are seeking 
in our minds, we may say that our mind has in it at the 
time a hole of a certain shape, which can be filled with 
only the right word. Every other word will be a misfit. 
Now if there should be two words which fit the hole, and 
one of these words is more associated with the general 
trends of the unconscious than the other, it will naturally 
be supplied first. That amounts to saying that, in the selec- 
tion of words while we are composing, we are governed by 
the principle of the line of least resistance, in thought, just 
as in physics. It is about the same, too, as saying that 
in thought, and in this matter of the choice of synonyms 
in particular, the actual word selected is the algebraic 
sum of all the forces that are possessed by each and every 
word that may have any claim at all to come into con- 
sciousness in connection with the theme on which we are 
writing. The same thing takes place in adding a column 
of figures. We are apt to regard the different digits as 
having no peculiarities of their own, but that is not the 
case. Every number, and particularly the smaller num- 
bers, has an individuality of its own. It is itself a little 
centre of force, a force which it has acquired through the 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR 27 

ages of human thinking, and when there is a balance 
between the one number and the other as was the case in 
the addition above mentioned, the number which is the 
stronger will come up into consciousness and replace 
the weaker number. It seems quite extraordinary to 
regard an absolutely Impersonal number, a mere counter, 
as having a force of its own, but that is exactly what I 
mean to say it has, if we look upon it not as merely a 
written or printed word or figure, but a state of mind, as 
in the illustration above given it undeniably is. 

When we realize that so elementary a thing as a digit 
or a single word is a centre of force, it becomes much 
easier to understand that other mental activities are also 
forces and that the net result of their operation, as we 
see it in a sentence or a paragraph or a book, is a highly 
complex result, which only the most thoroughgoing 
analysis can reduce to its elements. And if a book, a 
novel, a play or a system of philosophy is the algebraic 
sum of all the forces operating in the mind of the writer 
it is equally true that all other expressions of individuality, 
all conduct and every individual act, are quite as much the 
effects of all the causes, both mental and physical, which 
have preceded it. 

These forces we group under the name of wishes. The 
force of the conscious wish is quite familiar to everyone. 
A person, that is, a normal person, wishing for a thing, 
goes right along on the best known path of acquirement 
and keeps going until he gets it. The contribution of the 
newer psychology to this subject is that it is not merely the 
conscious washes whose fulfilment one is seeking from hour 
to hour and from minute to minute, but that there is a far 
larger number of unconscious wishes which are inexorably 



28 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

driving us to do things all the time, big things, little things 
and medium things. One can satisfy a conscious and an 
unconscious wish both at the same time. This Is shown by 
the sum in addition, where the correct sum was what was 
consciously desired, and the mistake was a partial satis- 
faction of an unconscious wish for creativeness. In fact 
every error of any kind whatever, whether a mistake in 
addition, a slip of the tongue or of the pen, a faults^ 
memory or a wrong act of reasoning, an erroneously car- 
ried out action or a course of conduct based on a care- 
fully reasoned plan, are one and all the expressions of 
wishes, partly conscious, partly unconscious.* 

That one can satisfy a conscious and an unconscious 
wish at one and the same time is shown very clearly by 
the choice of words in writing. It is quite evident in the 
composition of a poem, where not only is each word the 
satisfaction of a wish, but every thought, every figure of 
speech, every mind picture which Is evoked In the mind 
of the poet and afterward in his readers' minds. The 
most popular pieces of literature are those which most 
gratify the wishes of the readers, and to a large extent the 
unconscious wishes. I have shown that In my analysis 
of the figure of onomatopoeia on page io8. The wish 
gratified by imitative language is an unconscious one. 
When I recite to my classes the Greek line given on page 
loB, and also that where Chrysels steps from the boat, 

Eh 6rf Xpvffr/i? vrfo? fir} novronopoio, 
'Ek de I 'Chryse | 'is ne | 'os be | 'pontopo | 'roio 

the hearers even though they know no Greek are amused 
by the similarity of the rhythm of the words to the rhythm 

* See pages 167 and 257. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR 29 

of the actions of the girl, but they are quite unconscious of 
what wish is there satisfied. Also lines like that of Tenny- 
son quoted in the same section are liked because of the 
same quality. But the hearers do not know why they like 
them. They are just nice, or beautiful, or pretty, or 
grand, as the case may be, and that is as far as the an- 
alysis of the hearer goes, and it is as far as it is necessary 
for it to go, in most cases. 

But when it comes to making mistakes which involve an 
injury or a loss of money or life, then it becomes impor- 
tant to know the true causes. Likewise when it is found 
that some men and women can turn out a far greater 
amount of work than others, it becomes interesting if not 
important, and it surely is important in these times of 
war, to find out the exact cause of these differences in the 
efficiency of different people. To that end many elaborate 
experiments have been made and are being made daily, 
but enough attention has not yet been given to the causes 
which lie in the unconscious lives of the workers. 

In the schoolroom every mistake will take on a new 
interest for the teacher, when it is realized that it comes 
not from any faulty construction in the brains of the 
pupils but (in the majority of cases) from adverse desire 
on the part of the child, a desire of which the child is gen- 
erally utterly unaware, and which, when the newer 
psychology has permeated through the schools, will be 
controlled to the great advantage both of the individual 
pupil and of the country as a whole. It is the teachers, too, 
who will be the ones with the greatest opportunity of 
remedying the defects inherent in present-day education 
by bringing to their task a knowledge of the unconscious 
working of the mind. In the schoolroom there is the op- 



30 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

portunlty to a slight extent, and later I trust there will be 
a greater time given for the purpose, to analyse the minds 
of as many children who need it as possible. Of course 
it is needed only in the pupils who are doing unsatisfactory 
work. The others do not require the same study. But 
it will be found that those children who have the greatest 
difficulty in doing their lessons are those in whom there 
is the greatest number of unconscious wishes going 
against the successful accomplishment of their work. 

And this brings me again to the theme of the fulfilment 
simultaneously of both unconscious and conscious wishes. 
For it is a safe assumption that many if not all of those 
who do poor work would like to do good work, if only to 
gain the glory which comes from any kind of achieve- 
ment. But analysis of every situation where bad work 
is done reveals an unconscious wish on the part of the 
pupil to do bad work. There is in the defectiveness of 
the work a satisfaction gained by the defective worker. 
Either it is an amount of sympathy from some parent, or 
a wish, of which also the child may be entirely unconscious, 
to ** get back at " somebody with poor work. Possibly a 
parent has untactfuUy commanded the child to accomplish 
some school task, and the unconscious antagonism, natural 
to every man, woman or child, against authority is thereby 
aroused; possibly the task is rejected by the child on 
account of some real or fancied sickness, as Tom Tulliver, 
in The Mill on the Floss, said it gave him a toothache, 
the only sickness he ever had, to study Euclid. 

There are thus always more wishes than one satisfied 
in every act, in all conduct. Unhappiness always results 
where the unconscious wish, operating against conscious 
ones, which are those imposed upon the individual by 




THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR 31 

society, Is fulfilled; and the happiness which sometimes is 
found, as by the boy who plays truant and goes fishing 
or swimming, is never without the element of unhappiness 
caused by the conflict with society. 

So that every mistake in addition or in any mathemat- 
ical or other work in school is the result of two kinds of 
wishes operating in conjunction yet in opposition. The 
strongest has to win. The problem for the teacher is to 
strengthen the conscious wishes by aligning the uncon- 
scious wishes with them, by reinforcing them with the 
unconscious wishes. It can be done, and It is being done, 
but with less success than if the knowledge of the exist- 
ence of the unconscious wish were a perfectly conscious 
knowledge. I call it an imperfectly conscious knowledge 
of human motives, and a partly unconscious knowledge 
of them, to go on the general principle that emulation and 
ambition and desire for mastery and for praise is likely to 
make boys or girls do their best. It is really necessary for 
the teacher and the parent to find out why sometimes these 
appeals to well-known motives do not have on the pupils 
or offspring the effects which they are supposed to have. 

If it is taken into consideration how complex are the 
mental processes of even the youngest children, and how 
strong an unconscious desire may be, and how every act 
is the satisfaction of both conscious and unconscious 
desires at the same time, it may be possible to find in each 
case which is studied with care the unconscious element 
which is spoiling the whole product. In a glass manufac- 
tory a certain amount of glass turned out was of an infe- 
rior quality because its colour was not right. The manager 
told the owner that one of the hands had thrown a screw- 
driver into the mechanical mixer and that the relative 



32 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

strength of one of the components, soda, had been 
changed thereby. It was found by the owner, when he 
examined the machinery, that no such thing had hap- 
pened. The manager had through an oversight, which 
he was ashamed to confess, allowed the tank supplying 
the soda to the mixer to become empty. Now, I believe 
that teachers, as a whole, are too conscientious to allow 
the failure of any ingredients which they know about. 
They are quite as careful and competent as the owners 
(parents) in this case. But the point is that the ingre- 
dient necessary to make a high order of academic glass 
in this simile is generally unknown both to the owner and 
the manager alike. In this case, through ignorance of 
properties it might have in turning out ? thoroughly per- 
fect product, the soda is not used at all. 

Marion Crawford's Marietta contains the story of 
the secret ingredient which gave to medieval Venetian 
glass its wonderful colour. Now, the wonderful quality 
of some of the natural product of the human mind is due 
to an ingredient, so to speak, that has been sought for 
through the ages. It is the aim of educators to make a 
product which shall be equal to the best natural product; 
In other words, to train all persons to be nearly as pos- 
sible the spiritual and Intellectual equals of those great 
men and women who have had no education, or who, 
having the same education as their very inferior coevals, 
have distinguished themselves by being in every way su- 
perior to their contemporaries. 

Just as the colour and other qualities of glass are due 
to the ingredients and to the manner of handling them, 
so it Is clear that there Is In the mind a constant stream 
of what we might call ingredients, in the shape of wishes 



UNCONSCIOUS INFERENCE 33 

or trends or tendencies, the sum of all of which inevitably 
makes up the final product that enters consciousness. 
Most educational theory up to the present has been based 
on the hypothesis that all the ingredients were conscious 
ones. Educational treatises, to be sure, have chapters on 
the Instincts, and on habit and other topics, but the treat- 
ment of any of these topics which leaves out any con- 
sideration of the unconscious tendencies is sure to be 
Incomplete and misleading. To describe the mind with- 
out the unconscious factor is to rehearse Hamlet without 
the Prince of Denmark, a mere rehearsal, and no true 
performance. 

Unconscious Inference 

" The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak " might 
be applied to the so-called Inability of the pupil to grasp 
certain propositions and the relation between them. Take, 
for instance, in arithmetic the circumstance that some 
children cannot remember the multiplication table or have 
difficulty in remembering it. We may think that their 
spirit is willing, and their natural ability small, but there 
is very little difference In the natural retentlveness of in- 
dividual minds. The difference in the ability to remem- 
ber six times seven equals forty-two is a difference in will- 
ingness to accept, not the truth of the statement but the 
statement itself, in the first place. The attempt on the part 
of the teacher to evoke this numerical relation through the 
reasoning powers of the child Is quite as likely to arouse 
his natural unconscious antagonism as is the Imperious de- 
mand that he shall memorize the whole table of 6s. Both 
of them make an appeal to him to do something that he 
cannot see the use of doing. In the proposition that 



34 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

6Xi=6 he has no interest because it is so flatly self- 
evident that it seems sheer nonsense to waste time about 
it. With the other multiples of 6 he has no concern un- 
less the numbers can symbolize something to him, as, for 
instance, that 6X2=12 looks like the shape, now cur- 
rent, of a box of eggs holding a dozen. The trouble is 
that he cannot do anything with these facts. They will 
not propel a coaster or tease a girl, or anything else inter- 
esting. His flesh is strong enough, meaning the plasticity 
of his brain tissue, but his spirit is unwilling. There is 
indeed nothing in the nature of the multiplication table 
itself which should make his spirit willing. It is only 
some association that can be made with it that will 
show him that he can do things with it that will make him 
want to use it. The same is true of most of the subjects 
of study. 

Frequently in academic studies one comes upon some 
proposition from which it is necessary to abstract and 
derive the elements and make a catalogue of all the pos- 
sible permutations of the combinations of these elements, 
before one can truly be said to understand the subject. 
While this mechanical method of thought is natural to any 
highly organized machine such as is the human mind, 
it is in the latter buried deep in the unconscious, and it 
is diflicult for all children and for most adults to evoke it. 

The various versions of the two propositions which 
head this section, about the spirit being willing but the 
flesh being weak, would be quite as uninteresting to the 
average adult as are the multiple combinations of numbers 
to the average child. Just as the child cannot see what he 
can do with six times four equals twenty-four, so the aver- 
age adult has not yet been able to see what he can do with 



UNCONSCIOUS INFERENCE 35 

the different forms in which the same proposition can be 
cast. The versions, which are carefully catalogued in 
formal logic, with rules about which of them may 
and may not be inferred from each of the others are al- 
ready formed in the unconscious, and they operate there in 
such a way as to produce in some individuals some strange 
inhibitions. The rules of formal logic are the work of 
the conscious mind, and they are dry and mechanical 
enough. They might also be called the development of 
the unconscious thought which is behind all correct con- 
scious reasoning, and, when we think, we ought to get 
clear and logical results, but we do not, for the uncon- 
scious wish continually selects the one which is most con- 
sistent with it, regardless of scientific truth. 

When a child tells a He, the cause of his action in tell- 
ing it is one that exists in his unconscious wish. The rules 
of formal logic apply only to the impartial development of 
all the thoughts, and not to the selection of one of them. 
Formal logic takes cognizance only of the verbal form 
in which a statement is made and not why the individual 
makes that statement, and the numerous statements that 
might be made are all in logical form, but are selected 
only on a basis of their congruence with the unconscious 
wish. 

The cause of most persons' making any statement is 
generally that they wish it were true, and the louder they 
affirm it, or the more eloquently they can ring the changes 
on the same wish expressed in various ways, the more do 
they seem (to themselves) to get a fulfilment of that wish. 
But they do not see or in any way become cognizant of the 
latent wish. They do not realize that the satisfaction they 
get out of making that statement emphatically and In 



36 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

various forms is a satisfaction of the wish that it might 
be a true statement There is even a real satisfaction in 
proclaiming that a subject, say Latin, is hard. What is 
the total situation, if it really is hard? First, those who 
do not succeed in learning it well, have what comfort they 
may derive from the fact that too hard a subject has been 
given them for any except the phenomenally brilliant 
pupil. Those who do succeed in it have a very solid sense 
of superiority which is of course very wholesome and 
beneficial and gives them the confidence to attack other 
subjects which may be harder. But the reiterated state- 
ment of a child that any task is hard is only the conscious 
expression of an unconscious wish to have it difficult, 
either so difficult that it is impossible, or difficult enough 
either to excuse bad performance or bring generous re- 
ward of praise for a good one. Similarly of any vehement 
statement whatever, as that Emily cheated or Tom has 
had more of the teacher's attention or good will, and 
therefore took a higher rank than he deserved, or what 
not. The obvious advantages to the accuser, if the state- 
ments were true, are a matter quite apart from formal 
logic, which would have to employ the cumbrous syllogism 
to prove it, but are evidently an unmistakable expression 
of an unconscious wish to be relieved of a responsibility 
which would cause in the child a sense of inferiority if the 
responsibility were not rejected. 

The same holds true of all adults' statements. The 
assertion that a criminal is wholly bad is necessary to 
justify his being executed or jailed for life, and, if we 
have disposed of him in either of these ways, we can but 
wish it were true, or, as we express it, hope that it is true, 
because if it is not true, we are ourselves in the very un- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE 37 

enviable position of committing a wrong quite as inex- 
cusable as the criminal's. If on the .contrary we declare 
that any person or thing is absolutely good, we are but 
expressing our desire to have him (or her or it) quite 
perfect. And when we proclaim a person or thing as 
superlatively excellent we are asserting at the same time 
our own excellence in being able to see and point out the 
excellent qualities. All of which is quite apart from 
logic. It is, on the other hand, psycho-logic, which liter- 
ally means only the words of the spirit (the soul, which 
is complete and unified longing, asserting itself in 
words). 

The unconscious is continually working out the per- 
mutations mentioned above and, for the purpose of ration- 
alization, is dehvering statements for acceptance by the 
conscious mind, that are exactly these versions of the 
original statement, which is the true one. But the con- 
tradictory is the one offered by the unconscious and ac- 
cepted by the conscious mind. The acceptability of the 
contradictory, " The spirit is willing, but the flesh is 
weak," is partly conditioned by the fact that as a propo- 
sition it is in perfect form. It has a form, indeed, which 
is quite as flawless as the others. The only difference 
in form is that in the word weak there is an implied nega- 
tive, because it means " not strong." 

The Psychological Negative 

The force of the negative in unconscious thinking is 
virtually nil. There is no such thing as a psychological '' 
negative. The verbal negation of an idea is that idea un- 
changed, save for the verbal addition of the word " not," 



38 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

which has no psychological value whatever. To tell a 
child not to do what it is doing is equivalent to saying: 
" I see you are doing that. I congratulate you on your 
ability to do it. And you are doing it against the strong 
opposition of my will, which shows that you are strong 
yourself, even stronger than I am, particularly if you can 
go on doing it in opposition to my will." The only way 
to abolish an idea or stop an action is to replace it with 
another idea. Then the first idea disappears and is nega- 
tived in the only way possible. It is supremely difficult 
for some teachers (parents, or average business men, too, 
for that matter) to abolish the idea from their own con- 
sciousness. It takes hold of them, by virtue of the very 
dynamic quality it receives from the fact that it implies 

, a struggle of wills. There is no value to such a struggle 
! of wills. If the teacher's will prevails, there is a defeat 
' ^ to that of the pupil and one of the chief ends of education, 
the development of will on the part of the pupil, has been 
frustrated. The teacher, strong before, has been strength- 
ened, and the pupil, weak before, has been weakened, 
and has had initiated in his soul, if not confirmed, the 
habit of giving in, which, existing in some of the best 
trained children, is a continual impediment to their suc- 

V cess in after life. Success in later life depends upon the 
habit of conquering. So that when a situation arises in 
which there presents itself an opportunity for the battle 
of wills between teacher and pupil (parent and child, 
businessman and employee) the quality of the future per- 
formance of pupil, child or employee is detrimentally af- 
fected. It is much better not to have a conflict of personal 
wills, and particularly in the school. It may be of re- 
mote possible benefit in the home, but I doubt it. It may 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE 39 

be of great advantage occasionally in business, but that 
does not so much concern us here. In the school, when 
a teacher thinks it necessary to say " Don't," let him or 
her weigh carefully the possibilities of avoiding a strug- 
gle of wills which will result only to the detriment of the 
pupil. If there is to be any conquering on the part of the 
pupil, and I believe that the whole school life of the child 
ought to be one continuous victory, that victory should 
be, for obvious reasons, not one over the teacher, but over 
the work which is being superintended by the teacher. 
A habit of victory should indeed be developed in the child 
even if it is necessary to include a victory over the teacher, 
and over the school rules, in order best to develop the will- 
power of the child; but the essential point is missed en- 
tirely if the battle rages between the pupil and the teacher. 
If it is inevitable that that must occur, it is better for 
the pupil to conquer. I know that it is well for a per- 
son to know when he is beaten, and that it is a good 
thing to learn to accept defeat gracefully, but a training 
in the acceptance of defeat is not a good training for a 
child to fit him for competition in the external world of 
life. 

So it is of the utmost importance, for teacher and pupil 
as well, to devote their mental and physical activities to 
the accomplishment of the academic tasks. The personal 
relation of superiority or inferiority in point of will- 
power comes up again and again in the schoolroom as 
everywhere else. It has a tendency to come up, simply 
because of the fact that the teacher is human as well as 
the child, and that the fundamental desire of the uncon- 
scious of every human is to be superior. In this connec- 
tion we may clearly see the great disadvantage which it 



40 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

sometimes is for a child, particularly a boy, to have a very 
strong-willed father. The domination of the father pro- 
duces a habit of servility in the child which he tends to 
evince in his relations with all persons with whom he 
comes in contact in later life. If such a child comes in 
school in contact with a teacher of strongly domineering 
character, a character which, by the way, is fostered in 
teachers by the very atmosphere of any school, he will get 
no training which will offset the very adverse conditions 
of his home life. It would be better for such a child to 
be sent to a school where the teachers had been trained to 
allow the children themselves to domineer. In such a 
school the bashful, doubtful, quelled spirit might learn 
something of the habit of mastery. 

But of course the thing cannot be done that way. The 
teacher must recognize that the most vital purpose of the 
academic education is to train the pupil to master his 
physical environment, so far as that can be done without 
interfering with the equal development of mastery in the 
other pupils. The tendency will always be to develop 
along the line of mastery of persons and not things, and 
this, too, has its great value, but it seems to me that in 
school the struggle should be directed to the mastery of 
things and not persons. Because of the unconscious 
tendency to turn the attention to persons and away from 
things, and this on the part of pupil and teacher alike, 
this sticking to the point in academic education is a very 
difficult matter. 

To return to the consideration of the unconscious per- 
mutations of propositions — for instance, that the spirit 
is willing. This is the contradictory of the proposition 
that the spirit is unwilling, and the flesh is weak is the 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE 41 

contradictory of the flesh is strong. Thus by the intro- 
duction of the negative word we have four propositions : 

1. The spirit is willing and the flesh is strong. 

2. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. 

3. The spirit is unwilling, but the flesh is strong. 

4. The spirit is unwilling and the flesh is weak. 

The second or biblical form of these statements (ut- 
tered as a truth acceptable to consciousness, because it is 
a palliation of circumstances, and therefore an assertion 
of superiority) is a transformation of the truth which is 
expressed in the first: The spirit is willing and the flesh is 
strong. This last arrangement of the ideas represents the 
gist of the teaching of psychoanalysis. The doctrine of 
the unconscious teaches too that all these permutations 
are in the unconscious, ready for selection. The asser- 
tion of the weakness of the child's flesh is an assertion of 
the superiority of the teacher. If the child's spirit is 
willing and his flesh is strong, and the results of education 
are as meagre as they are today, then the teacher feels 
that he is somehow to blame. 

With strong flesh and willing spirit each individual 
ought to be perfect. I will not mention the teachers who 
think that both the spirit is unwilling and the flesh is 
weak. But the teacher feels less responsible if he can 
say that the flesh is weak. The child that does not make 
a good showing cannot do so, even with the help of the 
teacher, and no one is to blame. 

No. 3 — the spirit is unwilling and the flesh Is strong — 
is the unconscious attitude of the child toward school work, 
and he is not to blame for It. Neither are the teachers 
nor for that matter is anyone else. It is in this as it has 



42 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

been in the case of other scientific advance. Wireless 
telegraphy and aeronautics are examples of the present 
condition of the practical applications of physical science. 
In mental science we are as far back as the days of stage 
coaches and pony post. The discovery of the uses to 
which a knowledge of the unconscious may be put is about 
on the same level of development as the knowledge gained 
by the immediate successors of Benjamin Franklin concern- 
ing the nature and use of electricity. We have, in a sense, 
got the unconscious on a wire, but we have not yet been 
able to transmute it Into power with the same success that 
has been attained by the mechanical devices which are 
transforming Niagara Into light, power and transpor- 
tation. 

In making the list of permutations of the willing spirit 
and strong flesh Ideas we have been bringing Into con- 
sciousness (a dreary task, I hear some say) what was 
Implicitly worked out in the unconscious and is worked 
out not only with that but with every other possible 
proposition that could be made with words or even with- 
out words and merely with situations. Words are only 
the imperfect translations of situations into verbal 
form. What Is to tiresome about the mere bringing 
of these permutations Into consciousness Is the fact that 
we have not yet grasped the bearing of these particular 
concrete mechanisms of thought, which are combinations 
of two Ideas and a negative word, upon human conduct 
and especially that part of human conduct constituted by 
words themselves. But the unconscious Is like a machine 
which can take any proposition and combine It with any 
other, affirmatively or negatively. From all these per- 
mutations that one Is selected which Is least objectionable 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE 43 

to the Censor.* And our attitude toward education 
is largely that of proposition No. 2 : The spirit is will- 
ing, but the flesh is weak. We think that the pupil wants 
to learn, that he is willing to do the tasks we set before 
him, but we have really failed to see that while his con- 
scious spirit is willing, his unconscious is not, and that 
the unconscious part of him is by far the larger and 
stronger. 

Also we have failed to realize that the language of the 
unconscious is acts and words, acts forming as great an 
amount of its language, in proportion to words, as is the 
general ratio of the unconscious to the conscious. The 
acts of all children are almost all unconscious. In the 
rarest cases do children really know what they are 
doing, and in many adults we find an almost 
complete ignorance of what is the true signifi- 
cance of a very large proportion of what they are 
doing from hour to hour. Particularly significant too 
is what we are not doing. Taken together, what one does 
and what one avoids doing constitute a perfect picture of 
one's character. Now, that perfect picture is constantly 
before the unconscious of every observer, and this huge 
mirror so to speak reflects, to those who dare look in it, 
exactly what our real character is. Or regarded as an 
enormous computing instrument, the unconscious hands 
us out the sum of the product or the remainder or the 
quotient (all being the results of the unconscious compu- 
tation), and we have not an idea of how the machine did 
its work, any more than the average person has a clear 
idea of how comptometers work or what to do with 
them when they do not work well. 

* Cf. pages 50 and 107. 



44 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

But the teacher should not be the average person. He 
should not, though he does, see as little into the working 
of the mind of the child as does the average person see 
into the mechanics of the adding machine. To carry this 
simile a little farther, the teacher, up to date, has been 
required to know little more about the inner workings 
of the comptometers that he has before him in groups of 
ten to sixty, according to circumstances, than he would 
have if he only brushed off the dust with a rag and sat 
down before each one and worked it madly for a minute 
at a time, and then rushed at the next one and hammered 
it for another minute, and so on, and did the same sum 
on them all, marked the wrong ones failures and put them 
in another room to see if the air in that room would not 
improve their accuracy. 

As teachers, however, we should know the intimate 
workings of the rods, bearings, pawls, ratchets, springs, 
type-bars, ribbons, etc., of every human comptometer 
which we have in our classes. We are not fulfilling our 
highest function, which, to be sure, no board of education 
ever requires of us, if we do not learn as much as we can 
of the thought mechanisms, conscious and unconscious. 
Our sole duty is not to exercise the machines and limber 
them up, much as some automobiles have to be towed " in 
speed " to get them to go themselves. That may be a very 
great service, but my thesis is that the human mechanisms 
which are driven in shoals into our classrooms are almost 
all out of repair; and merely to turn the wheels of a 
machine which is not in order is as bad as trying to crank 
a gas engine without turning on the spark. And under 
the sleek hood of each school child, and behind all their 
radiators (of various designs), is an engine of which 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE 45 

many teachers wrongly believe they are merely the drivers, 
and not required to understand how the engine, when out 
of order, may be repaired. 

But if we realized that when some such statement as 
that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak is the 
reverse of truth, and that we can progress with that 
as a motive power about as fast as an automobile moves 
forward when the speed-change lever is in " reverse," 
we should be most eager to learn the mechanisms of the 
unconscious thought and be able to tell why our engines 
which we thought we had only to drive do not develop 
as much power as they ought, do not steer as straight or 
run as smoothly and quietly as they should; and with such 
a knowledge of the workings of the boy or girl motor car 
we shall be able to remove the hood, adjust the valve 
stems, clean the oiler, decarbonize the cylinders, etc., and 
take as keen a pleasure In being skilful mechanics as we 
thought to take as chauffeurs. Behind the " shining morn- 
ing face " there is a much more complicated mechanism 
than that Inside of the polished exterior of the sleek young 
car direct from the factory. We had somehow got the 
idea that, as an automobile runs better after about a thou- 
sand miles, all we had to do was to " joy-ride " each one 
a thousand or so and turn it over to the owner a little the 
better for wear. 

Possibly I might better have compared the teacher to 
an assembler of the parts of the machine. Any child of 
twelve can run one, if it works properly. But the fact 
is that the automobile-children that come to our classroom- 
garage have themselves been run by children mostly 
before we get them. They have been run without oil till 
they knock, without everything except gas, and sometimes 



46 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

that was full of water, due to the '' fooling " of the people 
who had the use of the machine before the teacher saw it. 
One of the parts of the unconscious thought mechanism 
treats reality as I have treated the unwilling spirit, weak 
flesh proposition. It turns reality inside out and hind 
side before, and, with one of the combinations, sometimes 
least suited to the conscious purposes of society, it pro- 
duces a result quite the opposite of that which best adapts 
the individual to his social environment. Other parts 
of the unconscious thought mechanism work in other ways 
and produce other contradictory results. So that what 
the child does or does not do, says or does not say, in 
school has to be interpreted as modern psychoanalysis 
interprets a dream. The dream has a manifest content 
(its apparent, bizarre narrative), and also a latent con- 
tent, which never by any chance is visible, except in the 
youngest children, but which has to be deduced from the 
manifest content through the thoughts associated with 
the elements of the manifest content. If my manipulation 
of the unwilling spirit, etc., seemed futile or uninteresting 
to some persons, it was because they did not see its inti- 
mate connection with the realities which confront us in 
the schoolroom (as everywhere else). I conversed this 
morning with a young teacher who confessed to me that 
she did not teach, she only went through the motions of 
teaching. I talked the other evening with an old teacher 
who admitted that teaching had become to him a deadly 
grind, as indeed why should not driving be to a mere 
chauffeur? Both of these teachers failed to get the 
interest out of their profession they would have had if they 
had seen that teaching is both a science and an art, a 
science whose sphere is the entirety of human thought,. 



SUMMARY 47 

conscious and unconscious, and an art whose medium can 
now, thanks to the newer psychology, be the infinite depths 
of the human soul. It is my belief that the study of the 
latent unconscious, as manifested in conscious thought 
and act, will give to teaching a fascination which artists 
find in real life and bring into their studios, which novelists 
find in Vanity Fair, which producers of all kinds find in the 
problems of their factories and of the means of distrib- 
uting their products, and which inventors find in their 
laboratories. By the recognition, and only by the recogni- 
tion, of the limitless possibilities opened up by the knowl- 
edge of some part of the unconscious shall we be able to 
see the '* willing spirit " in the " strong flesh." 

Summary 

The question as to what act Is most personal Is answered 
by calling what we most desire the most intimately our 
own act. The majority of desires are unconscious ones. 
Illustrations are given of the unconscious perception by 
one person of certain personal qualities of another and 
their evaluation according to primeval standards. A 
specific Instance Is cited of the absolutely unconscious 
factor In a stream of most intense consciousness (adding 
a column of figures) and attention is called to the fact 
that even the number three, when it is an idea and not a 
mere word, is a centre of force. This indicates the possi- 
bility of all ideas being dynamic. The simultaneous satis- 
faction of conscious and unconscious wishes in different 
spheres of life, including the schoolroom. The uncon- 
scious wish enters as an ingredient into every mental 
activity. Unconscious Inference, of the Immediate type, 



48 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

is discussed, and the relation between a statement and the 
unconscious wish brought out. This leads to the view v^ 
that the contradictory of a proposition is as valuable to 
the unconscious as the proposition itself, because the 
negative has no psychological but only a logical value. 
This is illustrated by the statement that the spirit is will- 
ing and the flesh is strong. 



CHAPTER III 

INTERPLAY OF CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS 

It Is my present desire to Illustrate as many combinations 
as possible of the conscious and the unconscious act and 
thought, as they are manifested In the everyday life of 
child and adult alike. I have omitted from this book any 
mention of the foreconscious, deeming It unnecessary for 
the theses of the book, but for the sake of completeness 
I will add here a brief exposition of Its main features. 
In omitting mention of the foreconscious I have been 
obliged to increase the connotation of the term uncon- 
scious. The unconscious is the repository of all the Ideas, ' 
sensations, etc., which have ever entered our minds, and 
possibly of others which have not entered our minds dur- 
ing our own lives, but have been inherited. Of the in- 
heritance of unconscious Ideas, however, there Is no 
scientific proof. 

The distinction between the unconscious and the fore- 
conscious is that the former contains all the memories, 
which cannot come to consciousness, and there are a great 
many of them, while the foreconscious contains the 
memories of all kinds which can be voluntarily evoked 
from time to time. Between this freely coming and going 
group of ideas which, like familiar names, dates, telephone 
numbers, scraps of poetry, music, etc., and the vast body 
of totally unconscious memories, accumulated certainly 
during the lifetime of the Individual and possibly during 

49 



50 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

the life of the race, there Is a barrier over which the truly- 
unconscious mental activities are absolutely unable to pass. 
We know of their existence by Inference only, but by an 
Inference which Is so logical and free from fallacy that It 
is Impossible for those to doubt It who have taken the 
trouble to sift the evidence. Not only of the existence of 
this unconscious, the thoughts of our minds, Irrecoverable, 
without the special technique of psychoanalysis, but of Its 
nature we have some reliable Information. It exists as 
a blind wish, an amorphous craving which can best be 
described as an unreasoning urge to life and love. The 
Illimitable power of this desire, expressing itself among 
other words In minute muscular contractions In all parts 
of the body, Is normally able to transcend the barrier 
above mentioned only In the form of actions which are 
approved by society. Certain disguises are adopted by the 
utterly unconscious wish, which convert It Into specific 
foreconsclous wishes with a definite form, and, bearing 
these disguises. It com,es now and then into full conscious- 
ness. The group of disguises, much like the costunies of 
the actors in a play, and like the words. Intonations and 
movements which are prescribed by the author and the 
stage manager, are ready In the wings of the forecon- 
sclous to appear In the drama of consciousness. And as 
the author will not write, or the stage manager produce, 
what will not appeal to the public, so the guardian called 
the " Censor " at the barrier above mentioned will not 
allow any unconscious wish to appear, except those dis- 
guised so as to be acceptable to society. 

Thus Is to be represented the condition of thoughts 
which exist In the permanently unconscious and in the tem- 
porarily unconscious state called the foreconsclous. But 



CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS 51 

as the concept of the foreconsclous is not really necessary 
to the mere presentation of the unconscious factor in 
education, I am obliged to omit what, if carried out fully, 
would occupy a book in itself. 

It would be interesting to speculate upon the degree 
to which even the most conscious ideas which we possess 
are backgrounded by the wishes of which we are never 
conscious and to study out the possible relations between 
the nature of the unconscious element of any wish and its 
conscious factor. A thorough investigation of these 
matters would, I am sure, bring to light a great 
deal of fact which would explain almost everything 
in human psychology which is now very difficult to elu- 
cidate. 

I have already mentioned the fact of the unconscious 
element which is found interspersed throughout the stream 
of consciousness, even where it seems to be flowing most 
narrowly and most swiftly. Certain relations of the con- 
scious and the unconscious activities, as shown in thought 
and action, here invite consideration. And first I regard 
as unconscious acts both those of which we never become 
aware, such as the movements of muscles and fluids accom- 
panying the physiological functions which never enter con- 
sciousness as such, and the movements of the parts of the 
body of which we only sometimes become conscious. Some 
of these are called symptomatic acts from their analogy 
with the symptoms of certain nervous diseases, although, 
as they occur in all persons, well or ill, there is no present 
implication of abnormality in them. They are all blun- 
ders, errors, slips of the tongue or pen, mannerisms, and 
even some forms of so-called neuralgia, twitching of the 
face, etc. 



52 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

As we are concerned here with four factors, conscious 
thought, unconscious thought, conscious action and uncon- 
scious action and the causal relation existing between 
them, it will not be a complete consideration of our topic 
if we leave unmentioned any one of the combinations. 

Conscious Action 

By conscious action I mean, of course, action of which 
we are conscious, which includes voluntary action and 
involuntary movements of which we get a sensational 
report through the afferent nerves. The causes of volun- 
tary action may be supposed to be the thoughts which 
precede and accompany it. The causes of the involuntary 
movements have hitherto been presumed to be move- 
ments and not thoughts, that is, movements in the tissues 
of the body. But it seems quite certain that when move- 
ments become small enough they are indistinguishable 
conceptually from thoughts, which we must therefore 
include as among the causes of the involuntary muscular 
movements, as well as of the movements involved in the 
various physiological functions. So that we can see here 
V the possibility of the involuntary movements being caused 
by unconscious thoughts, and we get an idea of how logi- 
cally necessary is the concept of an unconscious thought, 
and what may be supposed to be the nature of an uncon- 
scious thought — namely, a movement which is so slight 
that it has not the force to penetrate into consciousness, 
or, figuratively speaking, the position whence it could pass 
over into or be read off as conscious thought. And we 
see, finally, that the only difference between a conscious 
thought and an unconscious thought is just this fact of 



UNCONSCIOUS ACTION 53 

its being in consciousness, its being cognized, our being 
aware of it. There is no other difference whatever. And 
we can see that, if we suppose conscious thoughts to be 
causes of movements, both conscious movements and 
unconscious movements, there is no reason why we should 
deny to a thought some causative power, just because it 
has not happened to enter consciousness. And the fact 
that it has not entered consciousness does not imply that 
it is not strong enough to do so, for the newer psychology 
has shown that the thoughts of which we never are con- 
scious have been opposed in their attempts to enter con- 
sciousness by a special barrier set up by the censor, a 
barrier of special strength, peculiarly adapted to exclude 
that very thought. And we must suppose that the 
thought which struggles toward consciousness is progres- 
sively strengthened and that the barrier itself is contin- 
ually piled higher and higher by the censor, so that that 
particular thought becomes the centre of a battle which is 
waged by the unconscious against consciousness. Inciden- 
tally it may be remarked that such a conflict tends to 
result eventually in a serious derangement of the physio- 
logical functions themselves, leading to both physical and 
mental disease. 

Unconscious Action 

By unconscious action I mean, of course, any one of the 
innumerable motions of and in the body, of which we are 
generally unconscious, including those of which we some- 
times do become aware, the typical instance of which, 
within the body, is the circulation of the blood. From time 
to time we do become conscious of the heart-beat and we 



/ 



54 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

know how certain kinds of thoughts will cause it to 
become more rapid. It is also conceivable how certain 
kinds of thoughts would cause the calibre of the blood 
vessels to change in different parts of the body, thus lessen- 
ing or Increasing the amount of blood delivered there, and 
how In the same way other fluids closely connected with 
the most fundamental physiological processes might be 
affected. 

The greatest possible number of relations existing 
between the four factors mentioned above is sixteen, as 
given in the following table : 

1. Conscious action causing conscious action,* 

2. Conscious action causing conscious thought, 

3. Conscious action causing unconscious action, 

4. Conscious action causing unconscious thought, 

5. Conscious thought causing conscious action, 

6. Conscious thought causing conscious thought,* 

7. Conscious thought causing unconscious action, 

8. Conscious thought causing unconscious thought, 

9. Unconscious action causing conscious action, 

10. Unconscious action causing conscious thought, 

11. Unconscious action causing unconscious action,* 

12. Unconscious action causing unconscious thought, 

13. Unconscious thought causing conscious action, 

14. Unconscious thought causing conscious thought, 

15. Unconscious thought causing unconscious action, 

16. Unconscious thought causing unconscious thought* 

Nos. I, 6, II and 16, starred in the above list, imply 
that an action can cause an action and a thought can cause 
a thought, whether either of them is conscious or uncon- 



UNCONSCIOUS-CONSCIOUS INTERPLAY 55 

scious. The question as to the validity of a thought caus- 
ing a thought is more metaphysical than psychological or 
educational, and must in this book be accepted as the basis 
from which it is written; also the validity of the statement 
that an unconscious thought really exists, as no attempt 
will be made in this book to prove it. As for a movement 
(action) causing a movement, that is a matter of every- 
day physics. 

The Unconscious and the Conscious Interplay 

But the interplay between conscious and unconscious 
action and conscious and unconscious thought is a matter 
that daily affects the work and conduct in every school- 
room, as it does indeed in every meeting place of humans, 
and some phases of this interplay are so important, par- 
ticularly for teacher and parent, and withal so little 
understood, that it is thought advisable here to study 
some of them in detail. 

In the slip of the tongue we have an example of an 
action which at the time of its occurrence was unconscious, 
that is, unnoticed by the person making it. Sometimes the 
mistake is noticed later and rectified by the person himself, 
sometimes it is noticed and corrected by others, and in 
this case it is not infrequent that the person making the 
slip of the tongue denies that he has made It. The action 
may therefore be performed while the person Is unaware 
of it, and may or may not later be recognized by the same 
person. It Is different with slips of the pen, which are of 
course automatically registered. The mistake Is in this 
case recorded and there can be no question as to Its hav- 
ing actually been made. 



S6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

In both cases what was unconscious comes later into 
consciousness. But in both cases the action has been 
unconscious, and in no sense can we say that it was caused 
by conscious thought or action. It must therefore be the 
effect of an unconscious factor. Whether that cause be an 
action or a thought is not of any great importance, the 
only significant aspect of it being that it had a cause in 
the unconscious part of the mind. 

While from one point of view it makes no difference 
whether the unconscious factor is a thought or an action, 
for the purpose of schematic completeness I will include 
mention of unconscious actions which produce or cause 
conscious thoughts. Unconscious actions producing uncon- 
scious actions and thoughts are conceivable as absolutely 
continuous in all life from the beginning to the end of it. 
For by unconscious actions we mean all the physiological 
processes, and many of the larger motions of the parts 
of the body. 

Clues to the mental effects of physiological (i.e. uncon- 
scious) causes are given us in the mental effects of cer- 
tain drugs, e.g. quinine producing an auditory sensation 
and hasheesh producing a visual sensation, and so on 
through the emetics, sudorifics, etc., named according to 
the ways in which their effects enter consciousness. 

As to the mental (here meaning conscious) effects of 
unconscious mental activities, the newer psychology here 
furnishes us with facts many of which appear at first 
paradoxical, and all of them are highly important for the 
teacher and the parent. For it seems quite reasonable, 
when our attention is called to it, to say that. If there are 
so many and so constant influences of the physiological 
processes upon the conscious, and even more upon the 



CONSCIOUS CONTROL OF UNCONSCIOUS 57 

unconscious thoughts, there is more than a mere likelihood 
that unconscious thoughts themselves have an influence 
over conscious ones. It is inconceivable indeed that all 
the sights, sounds and other impressions we have had, 
and all the thoughts, ideas and feelings we have ever 
experienced, which are stored in the unconscious portion 
of the mind, should not have an effect upon each other and 
so upon our present nervous constitution, and thereby 
determine the nature, if not the existence, of the thoughts 
which come to us from time to time. 

Clearly, then, the unconscious thoughts, thoughts we 
have had consciously and then allowed to slip, or forcibly 
expelled, from consciousness, are ever present in the 
great and always developing world of the unconscious, 
and, by their unnoticed activities, they colour our every 
present conscious thought. And so we can go on and, 
once having had our attention called to it, detect the uncon- 
scious factor in all human action, a bit of detective work 
which is exceedingly fascinating, but which has to be car- 
ried on with the greatest caution and the results rarely, 
if ever, communicated, because they are, for a very good 
reason, strenuously rejected, and particularly by the 
persons in whom they are detected. A little practice in 
this picking out of the unconscious factor in the acts and 
thoughts of ourselves and our fellows soon shows us, too, 
how extremely great is the ratio which it bears to the 
conscious factor. 

Conscious Control of Unconscious Thoughts 

On the other side, however, is the possibility of the 
conscious thoughts causing unconscious ones, of the con- 



58 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

scious life influencing the unconscious life within us.* 
This is indeed one of, if not the most important of, the 
aims of education in general. Without the assumption 
that conscious activity has an effect on us, there would be 
no use in an attempt to educate. But what can be the 
effect, if it is not an effect on the unconscious thoughts and, 
through them, on the unconscious actions? And here lies 
also another implication, namely that, if there is a causal 
connection between unconscious thoughts and unconscious 
actions, which include the physiological processes, why 
may the connection not work both ways? Why may it 
not be possible that a well-learned lesson may be as con- 
ducive to good digestion, for instance, as a violent tooth- 
ache impedes the learning of it? 

It seems in every way more rational to suppose that 
conscious and unconscious thought and action are causally 
connected in both directions, in addition to the consider- 
ation that training of every kind is but the conscious 
control of unconscious activity, whether movement or 
thought. 

Unconscious Control of Unconscious 

We come finally to the question of the causal relation 
between the unconscious factors themselves. In this con- 
nection it is plain that the thoughts outside of conscious- 
ness influence each other without let or hindrance. They 
grow as in an untended garden, or one tended (up to the 
present age) by merely the fractional attention that a 

* Dewey {Democracy and Education, page i88) says that no idea can 
be transmitted^ from one mind to another, and (page 272) that much 
of experience is indirect. If that be true, it is all the more advisable 
for all those interested in the welfare of humanity to learn the means, 
most penetrating into human nature, of helping society in its develop- 
ment along the line of conquering chaos with consciousness. 



UNCONSCIOUS CONTROLS UNCONSCIOUS 59 

very narrowly limited ability to bring them into conscious- 
ness can exercise. What goes on below the threshold of 
consciousness in each and every soul is, at first glance, 
appalling to contemplate. There is no doubt, too, that the 
appalling nature of it has been the deterrent factor oper- 
ating to turn men's gaze away from it for so many cen- 
turies. But as with all deterrent things, the fear it inspires 
vanishes on closer inspection. There is also no question 
that to any person, when he first entertains the thought 
of the unkemptness of his own (and everyone's else) 
unconscious, there seems to be nothing in the world so 
shameful, so savage, so hopeless. But that feeling soon 
passes, giving way to one which makes clear one of the 
central aims of education, namely, to make possible the 
widest scope of conscious life, to enable each individual 
to realize as fully as possible what he actually is, inside 
and out, so to speak, and incidentally what other persons 
are. We become then better acquainted, as it were, all 
around, and more likely to make allowances for each 
other. 

And as a fundamental purpose of academic education I 
believe this one stands out pre-eminent, namely, to enable 
each individual to take at will into consciousness as many 
and as diverse thoughts as possible which the uneducated 
person is unable to face. For this aim, expressed in other 
words, is to enable the individual to face as much reality 
as possible. And in this I may at first seem to be implying 
that the unconscious is the same as reality, or that the only 
reality is the unconscious. But it is easy to see how that 
might be true, or how it becomes true, if the in- 
dividual develops naturally and without help from the 
outside. 



6o THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

For the Innate tendency of all individuals, from the 
earliest days of infancy, is to repress reality, to forget it 
voluntarily, to drive it from consciousness and keep It out 
of consciousness, because reality is largely, and more and 
more in nervous persons than in others, a source of pain 
and distress. The first painful experience of the infant 
Is annihilated for it by a wriggle, or disposed of by crying 
until some other hand removes the painful thing, and this 
attitude of rejection is typical of all repression. But there 
Is no question any longer about the fate of such repressed 
experiences. They are not really annihilated, as the 
infant might think, but are driven back into its own uncon- 
scious. And so we go on from year to year, accumulating 
in the unconscious all the painful and distressing expe- 
riences. By doing so we make them non-existent only as 
far as consciousness is concerned. 

Repressing the Neurotic 

Neurotics are those persons for whom the world of 
external reality is only or largely a source of distress. 
This being the case the neurotic is the trouble finder who 
is at any rate the forerunner, if not the actual elaborator 
of Improvements. All progress is improvement. All 
improvement in social relations implies the need of 
improvement. The assertion of that need Is loudly dis- 
claimed by society, because of the natural Inertia of 
humanity. The specialization of the neurotic is needed to 
furnish the push that is necessary to steer society from the 
direction in which, with gyroscopic fidelity, it is heading, 
and cause those deviations without which society would 
remain a permanent crystallization. Society, without 



REPRESSING THE NEUROTIC 6i 

the nervous activity of the neurotic which it at first re- 
presses and later digests, would never develop beyond 
the most rudimentary form. 

The irhport of all this for teachers is plain. If the 
children, or some of them, who are before the teacher, 
belong to the neurotic type, as undoubtedly some do in 
every school, they will be children whom the teacher 
cannot handle in the way in which he has to handle the 
others. The same external uniformity, so far as demo- 
cratic institutions may demand, will have to be maintained, 
but the mental attitude of the teacher will necessarily be 
somewhat different in the case of the two groups. In view 
of the fact that the neurotic children are destined to 
furnish the variations from the regular so-called norm of 
humanity and become as it were the models of the society 
of the future, the teacher will have to devote a somewhat 
more special interest to this group. In the neurotic boy 
or girl there will be the possibility of developing the 
ideas which society will later adopt. Any capriciousness 
of such children will have to be given a certain amount of 
respect. The strange ideas which such children may 
express are not to be ridiculed by the teacher, who in 
ridiculing them would be in the position of the barking 
dog which uses this method of heralding everything 
strange. It is the proper province of the dog, but not that 
of the thoughtful human. 

There is, however, a perfectly rational explanation of 
every whimsy of every child. It is the duty of the teacher 
to examine into the causes of everything in the nature of 
the erratic In children's behaviour and see where the 
logic of the situation lies. Much injustice is done to 
children if their thoughts are not given the attention they 



62 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

deserve. By ridiculing the unusual expressions of chil- 
dren, or by thoughtlessly brushing them aside as irrele- 
vant, teachers do much wrong both to the children and 
to themselves, because the amount of attention given to 
the really original thoughts of the children is more than 
paid for by the new point of view which the teacher may 
thereby gain. If the teacher in ignoring the peculiarities 
of the children, adheres rigidly to the inelastic require- 
ments of the curriculum, he will be required himself to 
devote all the time of himself and his class to the slavish 
following out of the prescribed details. If he never made 
any variation in treatment, of course he could never make 
any progress. If the curriculum is framed with the great- 
est care to fill the needs of the majority of the pupils, it 
will not suit at least a small minority. This minority is by | 
all odds the most interesting, and in the end the most 
progressive, because it is from them that the variations 
are to come which will form the still developing norm of 
future generations. 

There will be the added satisfaction for the teacher, if 
he has some regard for the peculiarities of the minority 
of children, that he may be the means of reducing their 
maladaptation to their environment. For instance, the 
peculiar child is always attacked either literally or figu- 
ratively by the other children in the class, who laugh at 
him, or even fly at him physically. If the teacher, holding 
as he may legitimately the point of view that the irregular 
child is not going to get on so smoothly in the world, and 
that his Irregularities will be at least a shght burden to 
him, attempts to prune away and suppress all the peculiar- 
ities of the child In the effort to make him perfectly 
normal, he Is of course doing exactly what the children 



REPRESSING THE NEUROTIC 63 

themselves are unconsciously trying to do, and he thereby 
reduces himself to their level, which is that of the fixed 
social environment. Now, the function of the neurotic 
in society, being to change, through his own variability, 
the uniformity of the social fabric as a whole, should be 
favoured by the teacher and not obstructed. Obstructing 
the changes suggested by the actions and thought of the 
unusual child will be doing the teacher's best to go against 
the development of society. As the aim of education is 
the adaptation of the individual to the social environment, 
this includes also the possibility that the environment may 
be a changing one and not fixed. If that is the case, the 
very worst thing that the teacher could do is to add a 
crystallizing force to the flux of social life, for in so doing 
he is himself obstructing and not helping the progress of 
social development. 

The actions of the peculiar or unusual child are in a 
sense quite analogous to the thoughts emanating from the 
unconscious which the conscious life is constantly attempt- 
ing to repress. In fact, the thoughts and actions of the 
neurotic in general are much more likely to be a more 
direct expression of the unconscious than are those of the 
so-called normal. If it Is the duty of the individual to 
recognize and adapt himself to the greatest amount of 
unconscious life, It Is surely that of the teacher not to 
ignore but to study the manifestations of the unconscious 
as they are developed in the children above and below the 
average of Intelligence, as It Is called. If the teacher 
simply Ignores the actions of the neurotic child, or, falling 
to be able to ignore them, succeeds In repressing them, 
he Is doing for humanity at large exactly what every indi- 
vidual Is doing for himself, and sometimes to his great 



64 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

disadvantage, for he is rejecting at least one form of 
reality. 

The tendency on the part of the individual to repress 
the unpleasant or the difficult or even the unusual elements 
in his life is irresistible in childhood, relieved only sporad- 
ically by masochism.* 

It is as if the unconscious of the child were a magnet 
which attracted pleasure and repelled pain. And it is 
as if the pleasure were attracted to one part of its soul, 
while the repelled pain drifted not away from the person- 
ality entirely but toward another part of it, the uncon- 
scious. It must be so, for we cannot conceive otherwise 
than that the human organism is a perfect and complete 
register of all the external world with which it comes 
in contact, and that if some of the experiences are locked 
up, finally, in a portion of the organism so securely that 
they cannot be accessible to consciousness, they are never- 
theless in the mind, and their effects are, though different, 
as real as they would be if the individual could succeed in 
reaching them. They are indeed the reflection, the per- 
sonal complement, of a good portion of reality, and the 
individual who cannot, or dare not, look at them or take 
them into consciousness and become aware of them at 
will is, so to speak, only a fractional personality. But 
most of us are that. This is what I mean therefore by 
saying that the unconscious is the reality within us. It is 
the other side of experience, absorbed into the mind, and 
by most persons sedulously ignored because of its unpleas- 
antness. 

The aim of education therefore being to develop the 
fullest personality, we inevitably conclude that the means 

* 3ee page 89. 



REPRESSING THE NEUROTIC 6s 

to this end Is the re-cognlzing (cognizing again) what 
has been repressed Into the unconscious. It has been 
cognized once, when It was received Into consciousness 
the first time, but the tendency to repress unpleasant 
experiences Is always so strong that we finally succeed In 
keeping them out of consciousness (though not out of 
mind) forever. 

So complete Is the repression of the undeslred elements 
of experience that for most people It Is absolutely Impos- 
sible, unaided, ever to recover these elements, although 
it has been found, In medical psychoanalysis, that the 
recovery of the memories of unpleasant experiences has 
frequently been the means of a recovery from mental or 
physical ills. Therefore the word recovery takes on a 
new significance, meaning, as It does, the regaining both of 
banished thoughts and of the entirety of reality, and, at 
the same time, the recovery of health (Health=wholth). 
Perfect health means the ability to do anything that is >' 
humanly possible up to the maximum efficiency of the in- 
dividual organism. It means also the ability to accept 
any idea, whatever its source. When for any reason the 
Individual thinks he is unable to eat and do anything, or 
is unable to entertain certain kinds of ideas, his personal 
entirety is beginning to acquire limitations. He begins 
to lose his wholeness, that is, his health. And there is 
no question that this attitude is at least quite as much 
mental as physical. What tells a dyspeptic that he can- 
not digest this or that? Certainly not his body directly. 
He makes mental inferences about reports from his body, 
and they are usually erroneous inferences. 



66 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

The Combinations 

To resume, after this lengthy digression, the consider- 
ation of the relations of the four factors mentioned on 
page 54, we find that 

I.* 

2. Conscious action causing conscious thought is 
illustrated by ordinary perception. The sensation of blue 
and violet colours on the distant horizon and green and 
yellow nearby is automatically interpreted as, for instance, 
a road between trees with a mountain against the blue 
sky in the background. I take it that the conscious action 
of sensation causes the conscious thought " mountain." 
It is quite evident, however, that the immediate effect is 
more than fully described in these words. For if we carry 
on the train of thought suggested by " mountain " we have 
thought upon thought occurring to the mind, all supplied 
by the unconscious and mediated by its fundamental crea- 
tive wish, all of which mental phenomena are not the direct 
effects of the mountain view alone. 

3. Conscious action causing unconscious action is illus- 
trated by the things we do all the time, things of which we 
are not aware, when these can be traced to the actions we 
are then doing. Possibly the best illustration is the physi- 
ological changes accomplished by the body in its prepa- 
ration for an emergency which is reported to conscious- 
ness at the same time. For instance, the actions of the 
limbs in the event of stumbling, or better yet the changes 
in circulation, respiration, etc., occurring when one is 
really or Ideally preparing for a physical struggle, and we 

* Discussed above, page 54. 



THE COMBINATIONS 67 

know from recent researches that these are very elaborate 
and far-reaching. 

Unconscious action caused by conscious action is amply 
illustrated by the mannerisms of all people. When they 
talk or work they do certain things with their hands, for 
instance, of which they are generally quite unconscious. 
Much of the study of motions in manufacturing opera- 
tions has been devoted to the eliminating of these wasted 
motions, which might have been removed quite as effec- 
tively, if not as speedily, by means of a mental analysis of 
the operatives, as all these useless motions are the expres- 
sion of the unconscious wish not to be efficient. If this 
wish had been understood and removed, the useless 
motions would have vanished without further effort. This 
and No. 9 are probably not pure cases, because all actions 
are generally, if not always, mediated through ideas, 
either conscious ones or unconscious ones. 

4. Conscious action causing unconscious thought is 
what we try to effect in academic education. Not only is 
it an aim of education to increase the amount of uncon- 
scious material which consciousness can take in and 
assimilate, but it is a further aim of education to exercise 
some control over the organism (or organic unity) con- 
stituting the unconscious. The advantage of this control 
is obvious if it can be attained, for otherwise the control 
is that of the conscious life by the unconscious, the latter 
in most people completely dominating the former. If 
such control over the unconscious by the conscious cannot 
be gained, education loses its main advantage. For the 
assumption that education has the function of passing on 
to the individual the experience, in condensed form, of the 
race is based upon the other assumption that the expe- 



68 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

rience of the race can find some lodgment in the mind of 
the individual. And this lodgment can be effected only 
through the assimilation of the experience of the race by 
the individual unconscious. It comes by various paths, 
but all through conscious ones and mostly verbal. But if 
the unconscious of the individual is, through early environ- 
ment, made inaccessible to conscious influences, then the 
task of educating that individual becomes infinitely more 
onerous than it would otherwise have been, perhaps even 
impossible. And it is one of the theses of this book that, 
because of the ignorance of parents, for which they are in 
no sense to blame, the unconscious of a large number of 
school children has been made inaccessible to conscious 
influences, so that almost all the work of the teacher is 
absolutely fruitless. 

In short, we may say that unconscious thoughts caused 
by conscious action is the name of a continuous stream of 
influence which works upon the unconscious daily. It is 
the only way by which we can control the enormous power 
of the unconscious desire. Comparatively little knowledge 
that is definite and ready for application to our present 
system of education is available as yet, but the small por- 
tion which is, should be spread and used as if it were a 
particle of radium, for it is able to accomplish what no 
other agency in the world can, except the conscious 
thought which is directed intelligently to gain control of 
and to socialize the great power of the unconscious. 

5. Conscious thought causing conscious action is 
what we all know as voluntary action. We desire 
and will and act, and the first of these causes the 
second and the second the third. There is nothing new in 
this. 



J 



THE COMBINATIONS 69 

6* 

7. Conscious thought causing unconscious action is 
common In the generally recognized influence of mind 
over body. That unconscious thought causes unconscious 
action, however, is not included in the general proposition 
that mind influences body. 

Unconscious action caused by conscious thought is 
seen in the symptomatic action following certain percep- 
tions. The fidgeting about when an emergency occurs, 
the clearing of one's throat when, in preparing to make a 
speech, one thinks of the possibility of making a mistake, 
and much coughing In congregations and school assem- 
blies are an expression of unconscious thoughts of disap- 
proval of some element of the " exercises." 

Consciousness is evidently much more limited in its 
scope than action. There are, In other words, actions 
which are so rapid and so numerous that for conscious- 
ness they exist only as groups. Thus unconscious action 
caused by conscious thought Is seen in everything we 
learn to do. Playing a piece on a piano is a concrete 
example of conscious thought producing actions so rapid 
that there can be no consciousness of them as separate 
entitles. Speaking a foreign language is another. The 
conscious thought sets in motion parts of our bodies (lips, 
throat, etc.) of which we are not specifically aware. The 
attempt to become conscious of a single element while it 
is taking place in one of these groups of which we are 
conscious only as of a group, sometimes results in a 
failure of the group to be carried out successfully. Thus, 
if we are running downstairs, it is frequently disastrous 
to attend separately to the motions necessary to take one 

* Discussed, p. 54. 



70 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

of the steps, because the consciousness which should be 
given to the whole flight is suddenly taken away from the 
whole flight as a unit. 

Mistakes in playing the piano come from this irregular 
shift of the attention, which is equivalent to saying from 
a shift of consciousness from a larger to a smaller unit. 
This shows very clearly why it is disadvantageous to 
attempt to play a piece of music at a rapid tempo until 
all the motions of the fingers and hands have become so 
firmly associated that the individual motions can be left 
safely to the unconscious. We thus also see the true 
advantage of constant practice, and just what practice 
does. It hands over the control of the motions from con- 
sciousness to the unconscious (that part of it which is 
called the foreconscious). The thoughts which were in 
consciousness, and necessarily there during the learning 
of the piece, or of the groups of motions of which it is 
composed, are dropped back into the unconscious and 
become unconscious thoughts, and it is these unconscious 
thoughts which function in producing the mechanical 
operations, while consciousness itself is devoted to the 
relations of tempo, intensity, tone quality, etc., which are 
determined in turn by other unconscious thoughts con- 
nected with still wider aspects of the ego. I.e. various 
desires for superiority, etc., which are struggling for grati- 
fication during the performance of the piece. 

Quite the same process goes on in literary composition, 
where the conscious motions of writing with the pen, or on 
the typewriter, are caused partly by the conscious thoughts 
which the writer is trying to express, and partly by the 
unconscious thoughts which are continually struggling for 
outward expression. This combination of effort between 



THE COMBINATIONS 71 

consciousness and the unconscious in literary composition 
always results in a compromise, what is actually written 
being a result of both causes combined. The actual effect 
of the unconscious cause in this case is primarily the selec- 
tion of the words used. It is quite evident that the actual 
words occur, apparently of their own accord, although a 
selection of several possibilities may well seem to be the 
work of consciousness itself. This is illustrated by the 
fact that a poet is frequently unable to give any reason 
for the use of a given word in his poem, when asked to do 
so. " It just came; it was the only word that fitted," etc., 
may be the non-committal reply. 

In those who use pen or machine with absolute fluency, 
writing is an example of a group of motions whose sepa- 
rate elements are as far as possible removed from con- 
sciousness, which is devoted to quite other aims, frequently 
indeed following a definite affect or emotion, and allowing 
first the words to come into consciousness, sifted through 
the conscious purpose, and yet not in the least determining 
the words or the grammatical forms which are offered by 
the unconscious wish. So completely is consciousness 
segregated from the actual motions that frequently they 
are imperfectly carried out. A word is misspelled or 
entirely omitted, two words will coalesce (as "withe" 
for "with the"), which consciousness perceives neither 
as a faulty action nor as a defective visual impression. 

8. Conscious thought causing unconscious thought Is 
a concept contributed by the newer medical psychology. 
This, too. Is one of the major aims of education, and, 
although the distinction between unconscious action and 
unconscious thought Is so hard to draw, on account of the 
approximation of both thought and action to each other in 



72 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

the unconscious (see page 52), It must be mentioned in 
this place as well as in the other. Unconscious ideas are 
caused by, or at any rate modified by, conscious ideas con- 
tinually in our mental life. In infancy or early childhood 
we make erroneous inferences about four of the most 
vital of human relations, — fatherhood, motherhood, 
sisterhood, brotherhood, and even marriage, — causing 
unconscious ideas which, in turn, later affect every impor- 
tant decision we make about the matters most intimate 
to us. 

The fact that conscious thought may cause changes in un- 
conscious thought may be objected to by the persons who 
declare that unconscious thought or unconscious mental 
activity has no existence. I think it has been amply demon- 
strated, however, not only that unconscious thought is not 
a contradiction in terms, and equivalent to unconscious 
consciousness, but that its nature is that of continuous 
wish or tension, one of whose aspects is that of a tension, 
muscular in quality, which nevertheless is potentially a con- 
scious sensation or perception. Accepting this position we 
are forced to admit that the causal relation may work 
quite as well one way as the other; in other words, not 
only that a conscious thought may cause changes in the 
thoughts or tensions, both those which have never been 
in consciousness and those which have been but are so no 
longer, but also that the unconscious tensions or mental 
activities may have an effect upon the conscious states of 
mind. This is actually the most important, because the 
most constant and frequent of the influences which affect 
conscious life, an influence which has not been known to 
exist or, even if suspected, had so much of an air of mys- 
tery about it that it baflled all previous investigators. But 



THE COMBINATIONS 73 

now that the modes of activity (or so-called mechanisms) 
in which this unconscious desire operates in itself and con- 
trols at the same time the operations of conscious thought 
are beginning to be known, a great deal of the apparent 
inconsistency and capriciousness of human nature is com- 
prehensible and reducible to known natural laws. Thus 
the existence of unconscious mental activity and the possi- 
bility of creating changes in it, training it to w^ork in 
desirable modes and to align itself with the purposes of 
real civilization, gives an entirely new aspect to the prob- 
lems of education. If we have in us, and are ordinarily 
dominated by, a group of continuous tensions all striving 
to manifest themselves to consciousness, or even merely 
to issue from a state of tension into a condition of actual 
movement which constitutes their relation, and if the 
tendency to issue into actual movement takes the form of 
an action not congruent with the social environment of 
the individual, as it does when the instincts urge him to 
commit selfish acts, then the sooner we can learn how to 
direct these mere tensions which constitute the uncon- 
scious of everyone the better. In order to do this suc- 
cessfully we shall have to revise a great deal of our 
educational theory as it stands today in order to make it 
conform with the new facts as we discover them from 
time to time. 

9. Unconscious action causing conscious action Is famil- 
iar as perception accompanied by automatic movement, 
which later enters consciousness. Involuntary blinking 
and all other similar acts are illustrations. Conscious 
action caused by unconscious action Is Illustrated by the 
attempt to suppress or control mannerisms such as strok- 
ing the beard. The causing of conscious action by uncon- 



74 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

scious action is of course the story of all movement in the 
physical world. But for the entrance of consciousness 
at some time during the period of evolution there would 
be no conscious mentality in the world. We suppose that 
during the course of evolution the element of conscious- 
ness entered; but we have no means of knowing how or 
when, and we can but speculate on the reason why. It 
has been surmised by some that it entered at the point 
where an awkwardness or difficulty arose in the combina- 
tions of matter and force, a difficulty such that compari- 
son and preference resulted, and that the need for more 
and wider consciousness grew as combinations became 
more complicated, difficulties more numerous and the 
need for finer adaptations became greater. At that point 
in the course of evolution when consciousness did enter as 
a factor in the causal nexus It became ipso facto capable 
of being a cause Itself and an effect of other causes. So 
that wherever it appears, it is itself the effect either of a 
physical or a mental cause or the cause of some other 
physical or mental state. 

The unconscious action which causes the conscious 
action most familiar to common observation is ordinary 
sensation. The vibration of the ether, which is uncon- 
scious action, causes through the sympathetic nervous 
system the adaptations of the eye which give us the sen- 
sation of light. Similarly the quite unconscious chemical 
action of quinine gives us the conscious sensation of a 
ringing in the ears. The actual external motion conse- 
quent on the perception of the light is, however, the 
movements in the muscles of the iris of the eye and 
those controlling the convexity of the lens. The action 
of doing something appropriate to the light or the drug, 



THE COMBINATIONS 75 

and not the sensation, is considered by some to be the 
result of the light or the drug, and the sensation itself to 
be merely an epiphenomenon. But to such people con- 
sciousness of every kind is epiphenomenal and as such is 
excluded from the causal nexus, but its substratum the dis- 
position is admitted. 

10. Unconscious action causing conscious thought we 
see in anyone's becoming aware of having made a mis- 
take, in his feeling a bodily pain of any kind or in any way 
becoming aware of any of his own physiological processes. 
Also it is seen in any conscious reflection about any in- 
stinctive acts. This variety of awareness is particularly 
poignant about the time of puberty, when physical changes 
that have taken place or are taking place are brought 
into the consciousness of the adolescent in terms which he 
or she is unable at first to understand. Here too educa- 
tion's task, which has been most inadequately performed 
In the past, places a new responsibility in the hands of the 
teacher, which those not having some knowledge of the 
unconscious will hardly be able to fulfil. 

The instincts and the instinctive acts are par excellence 
the unconscious acts which cause conscious thoughts 
because of their peculiarly compelling nature. The con- 
scious thoughts experienced as reactions to these in- 
stinctive actions, particularly during the period of ado- 
lescence, are with some individuals so unfortunate as to 
mar to some extent their entire subsequent life. The new 
powers arising from the unifying of the reproductive 
functions under the primacy of the genital zone * are 
so great, and the fortuitous and undirected employment 
of them frequently so disastrous, that it seems as if edu- 

* Compare the author's Man's Unconscious Conflict, page 128. 



76 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

cation had no more important task than successfully to 
pilot the adolescent through this period. 

Other examples of conscious thoughts caused by uncon- 
scious actions are all such ideas as may occur to anyone, 
as, for instance, that it would be really better to correct 
one's habits. Unconscious action may be said to cause 
conscious thought in all cases where we become conscious 
of actions after we have performed them. This applies, 
of course, to the sudden awareness of having made a 
blunder or blurted out a truth we had intended to con- 
ceal, or finally become conscious of the real significance of 
our actions, many of which we perform first and realize 
the meaning of only afterwards. This becoming aware 
of the inner significance of our actions is a sort of waking 
up, an illumination, a sudden burst of realization that we 
have builded better than we know (or worse), and in- 
deed is illustrated by all instances where we suddenly be- 
come aware of the unconscious factor in our conscious 
actions. The unconscious element in all conscious action 
has already been mentioned in another section (9), and I 
believe the most valuable thoughts that ever come to us 
are those which make us aware of this unconscious ele- 
ment. This is an awareness that poignantly gives mean- 
ing to what was before meaningless. And the results of 
this kind of awareness are very noticeable in the health 
and happiness of the individual. Nowhere else is it so 
clear that ignorance is darkness and that in darkness is 
disease and disorder of every kind. And no kind of 
disease is so charged with misery as that which springs 
from an unenlightened state of the creative craving. 
Many a person has lived a life darkened by a misinter- 
pretation of, or by a failure to understand, this most vital 



THE COMBINATIONS 77 

of all desires, and to see it in Its true relations to himself 
and particularly to herself, and to society. 



1 1.* 



12. Unconscious action causing unconscious thought Is 
also a new concept contributed by the later analytical psy- 
chology. The existence of this variety of human experi- 
ence is naturally impossible to sense directly. The results 
of it fill conscious experience, but the actuality of it is 
necessarily a matter of inference. 

In the sphere of instinct these unconscious actions must 
inevitably produce unconscious thoughts which are of the 
greatest moment to the Individual life. 

13. Unconscious thought causing conscious action we 
find In a great many situations v/here the Individual is at 
a loss to explain why he did thus and so. In fact, all such 
actions can be explained only on the supposition that they 
were caused by unconscious thought or action. A phobia 
or any other unreasonable fear Is an illustration in ordi- 
nary life, and, in the schoolroom, any unwillingness or any 
Irresistible Impulse on the part of the child to do any par- 
ticular thing or not to do it has to be thus accounted 
for. It can be explained in no other way than that 
this conscious action was caused by some unconscious 
thought. 

As will be shown in the section on rationalization (page 
164), an Inability to assign the proper reason for a con- 
scious action Is characteristic of persons of all ages, how- 
ever much they may be willing to give some reason. The 
reasons assigned by most people for their religion, their 
political views and their Ideas about sex are all really sup- 
plied by unconscious thoughts, no matter how strongly 

* Discussed page 58. 



78 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

the persons may affirm that the given reasons are the 
real ones. 

Conscious action caused by unconscious thought is il- 
lustrated by a great deal of the thoughtless action so char- 
acteristic of humans, adults as well as children, and when 
occurring in extreme form is known to neurologists as 
compulsion. 

Conscious action is caused by unconscious thought (that 
is, unconscious wishes, because all unconscious thoughts 
are wishes or tendencies). In a certain degree all of our 
conscious acts are partly determined by our unconscious 
thoughts. Those acts which we consider to be the most 
completely dominated by consciousness, where indeed we 
seem to will everything we do, exactly according to a 
definite conscious plan, are nevertheless not without a 
large determining factor which comes directly from the 
unconscious wish. Any mistake or error which we make 
in doing anything to which we think we are giving our 
entire attention is absolute proof that that particular act 
constituting the mistake was not in consciousness at the 
actual time of the making of the motion. This is true 
whether the motion be a lip movement, a respiration, a 
tongue movement, a movement of the hand or a step. 
It is thus seen that every error, no matter in what sphere 
of activity it occurs, is an expression of some unconscious 
wish. This statement seems very paradoxical when the 
error is a serious blunder leading to illness or loss of life, 
but it nevertheless remains true in all cases. The uncon- 
scious wish which may cause an action leading to loss, as 
for instance when one fails to lock the stable door and 
the horse is stolen, may not be, and frequently is not, 
a definite wish for that kind of result. It may be an un- 



THE COMBINATIONS 79 

conscious wish for something quite different and uncon- 
nected with the loss of a horse or anything else. It might 
well be an unconscious wish which was for leaving every- 
thing wide open, exposed, unprotected, a wish which may 
be really a resistance against authority and symbolize the 
general desire for superiority. Or an awkward move- 
ment which results in knocking a vase from a mantelpiece 
and thus breaking a valuable piece of bric-a-brac may or 
may not be the expression of a wash to destroy that par- 
ticular piece. Freud gives, in his Psychopathology of 
Everyday Life, an excellent example where a statue was 
smashed by an awkward movement, where, however, there 
was a definite wish in the unconscious to get rid of that 
very statue. 

Examples of conscious action having nothing but con- 
scious thought as their cause are really Impossible to find. 
Every conscious action contains so large an element of un- 
conscious thought that it is frequently possible to state 
that the conscious element in the causation of It was very 
slight Indeed. In errors It is, of course, nil, and there- 
fore we should perhaps consider this relation under the 
head of ^' unconscious action caused by unconscious 
thought." But this rubric I wish to reserve for the per- 
fectly automatic actions which will be discussed under 
No. 15. 

So that the conscious action caused by unconscious 
thought which Is seen In errors Is really a slight misnomer. 
We call the error conscious simply because we become con- 
scious of it as kinetic sensations during or after Its per- 
formance, In a series of acts to which we are devoting our 
" whole attention." 

I have been much impressed by the nature of the mis- 



8o THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

takes made by pupils in the study of a foreign language. 
The pupil who sees the word " impetum " and reads it 
" imperium," a word which has occurred a few lines be- 
fore, is, in this error, possibly expressing an unconscious 
wish not to exert himself mentally enough to make the 
fine discrimination necessary to differentiate the words. 
Those, on the other hand, who never confuse " viris " 
with " vires " or " viris " give evidence of an unconscious 
wish to make such discriminations and are likely to show 
the same tendency to discriminate finely in other spheres. 
Of course, the unconscious wishes of all pupils are almost 
uniformly against making the mental effort to carry on 
a train of " directed thinking," * instead of floating on 
the stream of " undirected thinking " or phantasy, where 
they get without effort the ideal fulfilment of all their un- 
conscious wishes. 



The Source of Thoughts 

14. Unconscious thought causing conscious thought is 
illustrated by the foregoing to some extent, but more 
specifically by the natural occurrence of apparently fanci- 
ful ideas during a state of reverie. The occurrence of 
any idea to the mind from the mind and not from some 
sensation or perception is a case where a conscious thought 
is caused or evoked by an unconscious thought. 

It is probably not strictly and literally true to say that 
a conscious thought is caused by one unconscious thought, 
because it is frequently found that the conscious thought 
is the combined result of several or many unconscious 
thoughts, each containing a small amount of the gen- 

*Cf. page 188. 



THE SOURCE OF THOUGHTS 8i 

eral tendency or trend of the unconscious as a whole. It 
is, however, a fact that every conscious thought which 
cannot be directly traced to a conscious action, and the 
only ones that can are the sensations and perceptions, has 
its real origin in the unconscious. The universality of this 
rule makes it of the greatest import for education because 
conscious thoughts which are expressed in conscious acts 
are the most palpable proof of the results of education, 
and it is clear that, in order to exercise the best kind of 
control upon the thoughts which spontaneously occur to 
the individual, we must devise some means of controlling 
the source from which the ideas (and ultimately the acts) 
come in each individual case. r 

But until teachers and parents realize the uniform 
source of all ideas (namely, the unconscious), it will be 
impossible to plan any method which shall exercise the 
proper control over the source of ideas. 

The fact that unconscious thought or tension has an 
effect upon conscious thought has been suspected for many 
centuries, but its mechanisms, as recently observed by 
analytical psychologists in America and Europe, are just 
today beginning to be understood so that a procedure can 
be followed out by means of them which will result in a 
better ability to control them. In short, the unconscious, 
long unknown, like an undiscovered mine in each and 
every one of us, is believed to be rich in most valuable 
ore, which can be worked with profit as soon as the veins 
are adequately surveyed, and the methods of the reduc- 
tion of the ore are fully devised. 

But more like " a woman in the case " the unconscious 
mental activity causes actions which are explainable on 
no other basis than that there is an unconscious mental 



82 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

activity of very high potentiality, and that it furnishes the 
springs of action which have hitherto baffled the specu- 
lation of the most penetrating philosophers. 

The most striking contribution of the newer psychology 
to the knowledge of human conduct was made by its dis- 
^ covery that the ordinary night dream is a direct effect of 
the unconscious wish, and that instead of being a trivial 
and insignificant occurrence, it is the straightest road 
directly into the heart of the unconscious. A dream is 
par excellence the conscious thought caused by the uncon- 
scious thought. It is the conscious thought to which no 
other cause save the unconscious can be attributed. In it 
we see the unconscious working with the fewest obstruc- 
tions it finds anywhere in mental life. The only inhibi- 
tion exercised upon it is by the censor, to pass which all 
the transformations take place that are effected in the 
unconscious wish in order to make it presentable as a con- 
scious one. 

15. Unconscious thought causing unconscious action Is 
seen in the disorders having a nervous origin which the 
newer medical psychology has taken as its peculiarly ap- 
propriate task to cure. This relation is of only admoni- 
tory import to teachers, for it will seldom, if ever, be 
their duty to attempt to cure the nervousness of a child 
by the radical method used in psychoanalysis. But all 
teachers should know that the unconscious thoughts of 
children and adults are admitted, by a rapidly increasing 
school of physicians, to be the causes of both mental and 
physical diseases, many of which have previously been 
attributed to merely physical causes. The theory of these 
physicians is that, when the actual unconscious thought, 
or group of thoughts (called a complex), is accurately 



THE SOURCE OF THOUGHTS 83 

ascertained, the cause of the disease is removed by being 
brought from the unconscious into consciousness. But it 
is an impossible task for the average teacher, as indeed 
it is for some physicians, to find this complex, because 
it has to be deduced from the voluntary confessions (free 
associations) of the patient, and it is never discovered by 
questioning. There is hardly a possible question that does 
not contain a suggested answer, except the one query: 
*' What do you think?" and the answer is most likely 
to be: "Nothing." I include this relation only for the 
sake of completeness of inventory, so to speak, the full 
discussion of it requiring a special treatise. 

Unconscious actions are generally caused by uncon- 
scious thoughts. The unconscious action of stroking the 
beard or the chin, pulling the moustache, sticking fingers 
in buttonholes, rolling up paper, pamphlets, etc., into 
tight rolls, picking nose, scratching the head, have all 
been traced to their unconscious causes in the desire for 
creation, the desire for creation in reproductive forms * 
being repressed and that for creation in productive form 
not having been developed in such people to such a degree 
as to absorb that portion of the primal urge which is leak- 
ing out into these so-called symptomatic actions. 

That an unconscious thought should be the cause of 
an unconscious act does not seem strange when once we 
have admitted the principle of causation into psychology 
and admitted the existence of the unconscious thought. 
As we know that the unconscious thought is a tension 
which is always struggling for expression in action, it is 
not surprising if some of the numerous tensions of which 
we are not, and never can become, conscious, gain their 

* See page 196. 



84 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

outlet into external reality through motions, attitudes, 
mannerisms, facial expressions and grimaces of which also 
we are generally totally unconscious. On this principle 
we know that the nervous coughing and clearing of the 
throat, together with all forms of embarrassment, includ- 
ing stammering and blunders of speech and action, are 
but the outward manifestation (a very much transformed 
one) of the primal urge for creation, an issue (not to say 
a leak) of energy which, in other environment, might have 
been used up in reproductive or productive creation. 

It is noteworthy that from this point of view many of 
the great accomplishments of humans are examples of 
unconscious activities, because they are results of which 
the producer never even dreamed. They are quite an- 
alogous, in their formation, to the nervous mannerisms of 
lesser people. The ideal expenditure of the energy of a 
man or a woman would consist in that form and degree of 
productive and reproductive creation which best devel- 
oped the innate powers of the individuals and prolonged 
the life of themselves and their families and contributed 
most to the liberation of the energies of their fellow-men 
and women, most of which are now being checked by the 
awkward relations which society, as it has evolved, has 
imposed upon itself. 

In an absolutely healthy development of social rela- 
tions the numerous inhibitions by which a life in a highly 
complex form of society is surrounded, makes it very dif- 
ficult to keep a wholesome balance between the accepted 
and the unaccepted varieties of relaxation of tensions. 
Expressed in other words, the unconscious wish for crea- 
tion meets obstructions on every side, and the more com- 
plicated the social environment of the individual the more 



THE SOURCE OF THOUGHTS 85 

numerous are the inhibitions. Naturally and instinctively 
the child seeks to create, and at the time of puberty there 
is an almost irresistible urge to reproductive creation. 
Education, dimly sensing the need for a transmutation of 
this reproductive urge, has, though with comparatively 
small success, attempted to employ the creative energies 
of men in a productive rather than in a merely repro- 
ductive way. In this, education has to go against in- 
stinct, and in this conflict arise the main difficulties of 
educational practice. ^ 

Unconscious thoughts (which are all wishes) are the 
causes of all the unconscious acts which make up so 
large a proportion of human conduct, the more youth- 
ful the individual the more unconscious the act. For 
a fully conscious act must have in it some element of an 
idea of its result. Take, for example, the throwing of 
a stone. It is of course impossible to say that the boy 
who throws a stone is unconscious of what he is doing, 
for while he is surely conscious of what he wants to do 
in throwing the stone, he is unaware of all he is actually 
doing, that is, he does not know whether he is going 
to hit the right or the wrong thing with it. He some- 
times resolutely blinds himself to the possibility of the 
stone's going astray and hitting something with de- 
structive effect. 

Careful consideration shows us that there Is an un- 
conscious element in every act, as we frequently do or 
say things with, for instance, a conscious purpose of 
pleasing, when a choice of words, on the spur of the 
moment, a choice of words which we are pleased to call 
unlucky, spoils the whole effect. Du Maurier in the 
London Punch illustrated a series of jokes which ran 



86 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

for years under the title of " Things Which One Would 
Rather Have Expressed Differently." The utter failure 
of such remarks, from the conscious point of view, con- 
sists in the unconscious element of the action, an uncon- 
scious element which is contributed by the unconscious 
thought or tension. This unconscious wish may be so 
hostile to the conscious desire of making a complimen- 
tary speech that it completely changes the remark, which 
was intended to be ingratiating, into a statement most 
uncomplimentary. In this case we clearly see the un- 
conscious element In the conscious act and the fact that 
it was caused by the unconscious thought, i.e. wish. Un- 
conscious thoughts, then, do cause actions which are 
entirely unconscious, as are the mannerisms, and also 
actions which contain an unconscious element, as do all 
blunders or actions erroneously carried out. Find and 
study the unconscious element in your conscious actions, 
and you take a step toward the understanding of your 
own unconscious. 

It may be said that a great, indeed by far the great- 
est, part of our several actions and behaviours and our 
aggregate conduct is composed of this unconscious ele- 
ment. Education In the future will, I think, enable 
teachers to disentangle these unconscious elements from 
the actions of their pupils, and thus be able to handle 
them better. In the still more distant future, direct in- 
struction will, I believe, be given to the pupil in the 
mechanisms by which this disengagement may take 
place, and then it will be found that the actual absorp- 
tion of cultural material by the pupil will be easy and 
natural and the exercise of the faculties, which is now 
such uphill work, will be the gratifying relaxation of 



THE SOURCE OF THOUGHTS 87 

tensions directed to this very aim, satisfactions and ful- 
filments of unconscious wishes which can, with the 
proper understanding, be aligned with the conscious 
wishes. 

The nearest we can come to the disengagement of the 
unconscious factor from the conscious In the behaviour 
of the pupil is to talk with him about the purposes and 
results of his action, and the relation between aim and 
achievement, to find out ourselves and show him what he 
is consciously striving for and the frequently opposing 
end which he is unconsciously attempting to gain. 
Analytic study of certain habits generally shows that 
they are attempts of the unconscious to gain satisfac- 
tions of extremely infantile desires which would be hotly 
repudiated by the pupil at first, but finally admitted with 
a salutary effect on his conduct and work. 

It is very difficult not to exceed all reasonable limits 
in writing on a topic which opens up the unconscious 
element in all conscious acts. It suggests, for Instance, 
all kinds of faulty performances, the great habitat of 
which is the schoolhouse, and every kind of human 
blunder which habitat everywhere. It also suggests an 
exposition of the modern theory of the interpretation of 
dreams, which are a conscious mental activity caused en- 
tirely by the unconscious thought. But as they are bet- 
ter classed as conscious thoughts and are not really acts, 
with the exception of that sporadic phenomenon of talk- 
ing in one's sleep, I have mentioned them only there.* 

*§ 14, page 82; also see the author's Man's Unconscious Conflict, 
page 144. 



88 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Summary 

The conscious and the unconscious thought and act 
are both identified and distinguished, and their relations 
discussed in detail, showing how education depends on 
the conscious thought being able to act as a causative 
factor in unconscious thought and action, and how the 
existence of any specific thought in the mind indicates 
its origin in the unconscious, from which it is thrust into 
consciousness by the power of the unconscious wish. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PARTIAL TRENDS 

The mechanisms which are to be taken up in the next 
chapter are supplemented by the partial trends which 
differ slightly in the opposite sexes. It is customary to 
speak of the stream of unconscious desire as the libido 
or the libido trend. It should not be thought that, be- 
cause this word was chosen, the libido is solely regarded 
as being a crassly sexual concupiscence. On the con- 
trary the full force of the libido may, through the 
power of sublimation,* be directed exclusively to goals 
that are quite apart from the sexual. This dirigibility 
of the libido distinguishes the higher intellectual person 
from the animal-level human. It is also this capacity 
for sublimation which school education consciously aims 
at developing. As we can develop the capacity for sub- 
limation of the individual's libido, academic education 
may be a success. If we could not do it, education would 
be a failure. 

Sadism — Masochism 

Some of the libido is regularly found existing in two 
pairs of attributes, each having opposite characteristics 
emanating from the active and passive form of the same 
trend. A tendency to inflict pain and a pleasure in 

* See pages 146 and 227. 
89 



90 THE CHILD^S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

inflicting pain upon others is normally found in all 
healthy children at one stage in the development of their 
personality. If this is not properly outgrown, or 
sloughed off, as are the first set of teeth or the epithe- 
lial cells of the skin, the persistence of it into the age 
of adulthood is an abnormality called Sadism. For the 
Sadist the infliction of pain is essential to his own en- 
joyment of the pleasures of love. This is not to say 
that all persons finally outgrow this tendency all 
at once and at a definite date. On the contrary, most 
adults continue to possess a certain amount of sadistic 
characteristics without which it is unlikely that they 
would succeed wherever competition enters into the se- 
curing of any desired aim. For a person absolutely 
without sadistic traits — in other words, a person in whom 
the inevitable sadistic traits had been completely re- 
pressed — would never take any pleasure in winning any 
sort of game, nor In being successful in any competition 
whether athletic or commercial. He could never shoot 
an animal for food or hook a fish, for he would feel so 
keenly the suffering of the victim as to prefer to refrain 
from Injuring him in every way. Similarly It may be said 
of all the partial libido trends that they exist In both direc- 
tions to a slight extent In all adults. 
^ The partner of this trait of sadism Is known as Maso- 
chism. An out-and-out Masochlst is one who takes the 
keenest pleasure not in inflicting but In suffering pain. 
The true masochlst must suffer In order to get pleasure. 
As both of these traits concern pain, and the pleasure 
derived from Inflicting and suffering It, they are called 
partial libido trends, and it is found that they are always 
paired in every individual, though in varying proportions. 



SADISM— MASOCHISM 9 1 

And it is easy to see that if a person was preponderatingly 
sadistic, his masochism would be shoved into the back- 
ground, and vice versa. 

It is less easy to understand, though it has been shown 
in many analyses of both men and women, that a desire 
to inflict pain, deeply repressed into the unconscious, may 
be compensated for by a very vivid concern about other 
people's not suffering pain. Ardent advocates of anti- 
vivisectionism and of prevention of cruelty to animals and 
to children are quite evidently occupied mentally with the 
idea of cruelty. There is a great deal of creative force 
expended by such people on the maintenance of the idea 
of cruelty. For cruelty is filling their minds when they 
tell us so vehemently that cruelty must be stopped. The 
people who have no cruelty in their hearts never think of 
cruelty at all, and would least of all consume their nights 
and days in an attempt to keep other people from being 
cruel. It is the belief of such persons that, in order to 
deter, we must portray in hideous lineaments. The anti- 
vivisectionists have minds filled with cruelty, albeit nega- 
tive cruelty. Their cruelty is not in the conscious part of 
their minds, but in the unconscious. They are themselves 
of course not aware of this unconscious content of cruelty, 
this repressed sadism; consciously they think themselves 
to be paragons of tender-heartedness. And they certainly 
are, if tender-heartedness Is the repression of cruelty. In 
this case it appears, paradoxically, that the more (uncon- 
scious) cruelty, the more (conscious) kindness, and the 
more effusively kind a person is, the more is he compen- 
sating for unconscious sadism. 



92 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Exhibitionism 

This pair of traits, consisting of the wish to hurt and 
^ to be hurt, is paralleled by the second pair, which is to 
see and to be seen. This appears in a noticeable degree 
in children but normally disappears at a certain stage of 
development, never again to be noticed as such, much as 
a bar of gold might be ground into grains and sprinkled 
in the sand of the sea, where it might produce but a faint 
lustre, or a skein of brilliant yarn, which is used as a single 
thread among a hundred in the weaving of a fabric. 

For all children have a desire " to see and eke for to 
be seye." Teachers and parents well know that, while 
the infant has no inhibition placed on his showing his 
entire body or inspecting that of anyone else, much that 
Is usefully done in later years is at least partly determined 
by this partial libido trend. The " exhibitionists " and 
" peeping Toms " of the courts are persons In whom this 
trait has not been broken up at the proper time before 
adolescence, but has persisted unchanged or amplified, a 
mark of undeveloped Infantility. 

Artists and actors are examples of the useful and pro- 
ductive control of this partial libido trend. The actor is 
rewarded by society for continuing to exhibit his body and 
what mentality he can, while the artist Is a socially ap- 
proved exhibitionist of the second degree, showing not his 
physical person but his spiritual qualities (his uncon- 
scious) through the medium of his art. 

In the schoolroom the teacher has before him a con- 
tinuous drama of only partly repressed sadism and ex- 
hibitionism, which It is his duty to ignore as far as possi- 
ble and to eradicate chiefly by the substitution of interests 



AMBIVALENCE 93 

that direct the attention of the child away from self and 
toward things and the relations between them. 

Ambivalence 

A characteristic of unconscious mentality which is based 
on an essential quality of the physiological structure is 
known as ambivalence. It roughly corresponds to oppo- 
sition and antagonism, in the good senses of those terms. 
The body, when not comparatively relaxed as it is in 
sleep is maintained in any position by virtue of the op- 
posed muscles, pairs of which in contrary tension with 
varying strains constantly keeping each limb In the desired 
position. If one of the pair should be suddenly paralysed 
the limb would be forcibly flexed in the other direction 
by the tension of the one not paralysed and the posture 
would come to an end. 

It is quite analogous in the matter of sensations and 
perceptions. We have, for Instance, a sensation of yellow 
from an orange only by virtue of the other colours which 
surround it. If the experiment were made of putting an 
orange close enough to each eye to fill the entire field of 
vision, we should find that the orange colour finally gave 
way and we had no colour sensation whatever. It may 
similarly be said that consciousness of any quality depends 
upon the constant substitution or replacement of that 
quality by another. The same quality cannot endure and 
remain conscious. With an absolute monotone dinning In 
our ears we finally become unconscious of tone as such, 
with the same odour assailing our noses unchanged we 
soon become oblivious of any odour. 

It is interestingly and Instructively analogous with re- 



94 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

gard to the emotions. These states of mind are regarded 
by the newer psychology more as states of matter than 
they have previously been regarded by the older mental 
science. Thus, the emotion of fear is now considered to 
consist of minute physical contractions of the very mus- 
cles which would be used in flight. In other words, fear 
is a physical preparation for flight. The importance of 
this fact for us in the present study is that what we con- 
sciously note in ourselves as the effects of fear or the sen- 
sation of fear is registered in the unconscious as muscle 
contraction and respiratory and circulatory changes which 
accompany actual flight. Thus, a fear, to use Frink's 
words,* is an " unfled flight " and anger is an " unfought 
fight." In suffering the emotion of fear, we are in a con- 
dition affecting not only our consciousness but our uncon- 
scious, a condition which may be described as a violent 
conflict between the former and the latter. It is interest- 
ing to note the contrary effects of two opposite actions 
of persons who are afraid. If they take active means to 
escape from the observed danger, the bodily sensations 
accompanying the emotion of fear promptly cease. The 
action of running is carried out externally and conscious- 
ness is absorbed in the flight. Thus the conflict which ex- 
isted or might have existed between conscious reasoning 
about the senselessness of fear and the unconscious con- 
traction of numerous muscles is immediately brought to 
an end. The individual is united body and mind. Union 
of body and mind always produces action. Perfect action 
implies union. 

In the other case where fear occurs to a person who is 
unable to take any action the result is a conflict whose ef- 

* Morbid Fears and Compulsions, page 254. 



AMBIVALENCE 95 

fects may be seen In every such case quite clearly. Such 
a person's limbs move convulsively, the blood leaves his 
face to go to his muscles where it is needed in case of 
their violent use, and his respiration becomes short and 
shallow, necessitating frequent compensation in deep sighs. 
• Fear, then, is flight. It is a flight that is carried out 
in miniature with the body in chains, so to speak, and un- 
able to move. It is a chained man struggling to free him- 
self from chains. In a sense, then, fear is a state of mind 
imposed upon us by society. Instinctively as animals we 
should in similar circumstances flee or attack the fancied 
cause of our fear, but not fear it. Society, in checking the 
flight or aggressiveness, has paralysed the outward, but 
it could not the inward, motions. Like all other veneers 
of society, fear is merely superficial. The agitation of the 
act of fear is potent witness to its not really affecting the 
instinctive unconscious elements of our personality. 

In like manner anger is but the repressed action of 
fighting. Wrath is thus said to be swallowed, the ex- 
pression indicating the popular and correct idea that the 
action is retained within the organism. Similarly hate 
is but retained or repressed murder, and love but an un- 
realized embrace. If, then, it is clearly understood how 
physically conditioned are all the emotions, it will be seen 
that a classification of them would be quite rational if 
based upon the types of actions which are therein in- 
ternalized, so to speak. We may some day go so far as 
to name and classify the emotions according to the move- 
ments made in externalizing the actions which are in- 
ternalized by the emotions, or even according to the mus- 
cles or groups of muscles used. (My very soul's all fist 
for his face.) ' 



96 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Realizing, then, that all emotions are but restrained 
activity (which Is equivalent to curbed desire), one can 
easily see how the principle of ambivalence mentioned at 
the beginning of this section applies to the emotions. For 
not only Is all motion physical and of the muscular type 
(possibly It would be better to say that all muscles neces- 
sarily function according to the principles of mechanics, 
of which the lever with Its power weight and fulcrum Is 
the fundamental type), but It all depends upon the effort 
and a force or object resisting It. 

Thus It Is easy to understand the ambivalence or dual 
nature of the emotions and the apparent paradoxes which 
they produce. Thus anger being only the suppressed 
form of fight. It happens very frequently that the fighters, 
after the fight, forget their anger and become friends 
again. At least that Is very frequently observed with 
children. The actual fighting is what was desired; the 
muscles craved use. When this desire Is satisfied, there Is 
naturally and instinctively no motive for fighting. I am 
persuaded that all remaining rancour shown in civilized 
peoples must come from an incompleteness of the satis- 
faction gained In the fight on account of the fighters not 
letting themselves out with sufficient abandon. A real 
good fight is a satisfying fight and will last until Idleness 
makes muscles fidgety. 

Love and hate are similarly ambivalent toward each 
other. Not only does one approve and disapprove an- 
other person for qualities some of which are bad and 
others good, as everyone Is a mixture of qualities good 
and bad, but one instinctively (that is, unconsciously) 
loves and hates the same person at the same time wholly 
and completely. The convertibility of the one emotion 



AMBIVALENCE 97 

so quickly and easily into its opposite is sufficient proof 
of the fundamental ambivalence of all emotions. Further- 
more, if emotions are but condensed motions, and if the 
emotions must have some mental content quite as much as 
movements of the body require some physical opposition, 
it is quite conceivable that if the outlet for these activities 
towards a person is dammed in one way, say the love way, 
it will seek expression in the opposite way, particularly 
if there be no middle course. And with respect to the 
vehement attention necessarily given in love there can 
be no other way, if love is denied, than vehement hate. 
Indifference would simply mean directing the emotional 
activities toward another person, who also would be the 
recipient of love or hate according to circumstances. 

This fact is of the greatest importance to parents and 
teachers, in understanding the actions of their children and 
the pupils entrusted to their care. When it is realized 
by teachers that the love-hate relation indicates a high 
degree of personal interest and that, with children par- 
ticularly, hate can be readily changed into love, it will 
be much easier for the teacher to get on with, and be loved 
by, the pupil. If the child likes or dislikes the teacher 
exceedingly, it is because the child particularly affects the 
teacher and this affection is naturally quite ambivalent, 
and according to the logical reasoning on true or false 
premises may turn out either in what we call love or hate. 

Ambivalence is thus clearly a fundamental attribute 
of all nature, including human nature. Misconduct in the 
home or disorder In the schoolroom is frequently caused 
by this convertibility of conduct from one kind into Its 
opposite, a condition which both parent and teacher should 
know, as it will remove any and all ground for resent- 



98 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

ment against the children for the peccadilloes, particularly 
as teachers or parents usually make some inference as 
to the motive of the naughtiness and are themselves moved 
to resentment thereby. Then, too, we now know that a 
strong feeling for or against a particular pupil is equally 
a sign of a strong interest or affection on the teacher's 
part. Let no teacher say that he or she is specially 
troubled by such and such a boy or girl without intending 
to betray a greater interest in that boy or girl than the 
teacher consciously thinks he has. 

Summary 

The partial trends of the libido are the tendencies 
toward looking and being looked at, the active and passive 
phases of the same trend, and the tendency to inflict pain 
upon others and to enjoy the pain inflicted by others on 
self. Ambivalence is the fundamental structural charac- 
teristic of all organic nature, and is seen in the interchange 
of opposing emotions. Fear is described as an internally 
fled flight, and anger as a subjectively fought fight. 



CHAPTER V 

THE MECHANISMS 

A MECHANISM IS a manner In which the unconscious men- 
tality functions and in which it influences, if it does not 
entirely control, the conscious life of the individual. The 
mechanisms are as rigidly determined by natural laws 
as are the physiological functions, from which indeed they 
are derived. The newer psychology is the first to recog- 
nize the effects of these mechanisms upon conscious life 
and to attempt to describe and classify them, and show 
their universal and constant operation upon all conscious 
acts and thoughts. 

Old and New Psychology 

In the old psychology association of ideas, attention, 
will, memory and discussions as to the nature of percep- 
tion and the impossibility of pure sensation were the 
topics, and the ingenious adaptations of these concepts to 
concrete life were the admiration of some students and the 
source of a great deal of bewilderment on the part of 
some others. The older psychologies had next to nothing 
to say about sexual matters or about love. James has 
about one page out of the 1,400 pages of his Principles 
of Psychology. The newer psychology is practically cen- 
tered on love and its different manifestations in child, 
adolescent and adult life. And while the older pschology 

99 



/ 



100 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

v/as more a descriptive one, giving accounts of successive 
states of conscious mind, the newer psychology is a 
dynamic one and studies the impulses, instincts, motives 
and causes of thought and action, not only in conscious- 
ness but in the unconscious as well, thus taking into account 
a vast sphere of mental activity hitherto almost completely 
Ignored. There were very good reasons for ignoring 
It, too, just because it contains a great deal of what con- 
scious life regards as unpleasant, not to say even intoler- 
able. But it is thought that if science is to investigate, 
she must have nothing closed to her. Nothing but a 
complete survey of what is visible will satisfy modern 
science, which is yet surrounded by the invisible and inscru- 
table. The most materialistic view does not see all, can- 
not explain the difference between animate and inanimate 
nature, no matter how completely it mechanizes thought. 
It Is our duty to look at as much as we can see, and 
look at it fearlessly. The story of the tree of knowledge 
of good and evil is a myth which shows a desire on the 
part of the people formulating it — a desire to be excused 
from exact knowledge, which is acquired only by pains- 
taking effort. It is also a desire to be allowed to con- 
tinue to picture in the imagination the gratification of 
desire, where desire can be gratified without physical ef- 
fort, or without mental effort of the controlled or directed 
variety, but with only the spontaneous functioning of the 
ability to dream dreams. Science has to study the pheno- 
mena of thunderstorms as well as the theory of light, of 
decay as well as of growth, of disease as well as health, 
where indeed it finds no very sharp dividing line, and It 
has to study the invisible as well as the visible, the un- 
Intuitable as well as that which may be intuited, that of 



OLD AND NEW PSYCHOLOGY loi 

which we cannot have direct perception quite as much as 
that of which we have. 

There is a psychological analogy in the questions about 
where, on the one hand, the child comes from, invariably 
asked by children either of themselves or of others, where 
other things come from, and where, on the other hand, 
ideas and emotions come from. Both depend on man's 
natural curiosity about the existence of things before and 
after they are sensed. About the existence of things we 
cannot see, v/e feel certain when we can touch them, even 
if they are invisible. About the existence of mental 
states or activities we have up to today made the same kind 
of judgment as we make about the existence of the flame 
of the candle after it is snuffed out. We know the flame 
is non-existent, and we have inferred, on some such analog- 
ical basis, that the mental activity, because not perceptible 
when, like the candle flame, it vanished from our sight, 
was also non-existent. As it is the duty of science to study, 
by means of their effects, the existence and nature of things 
not visible, it is also its duty to investigate things not per- 
ceptible, among which are thoughts when they are not in 
consciousness. 

A mental image of a certain rural scene with which I 
am very familiar comes before my mind's eye with great 
vividness. At the same time I have also a sort of abridged 
edition of the pleasure I had when I actually saw the place 
twenty-five years ago. The visual image appears and dis- 
appears absolutely without my control. The same thing 
occurs, but with more feeling of control, with names, num- 
bers, etc. I think I can call them up at will. The sight 
that has been seen even once is in the mind. It has the 
same existence, in every respect, as it would have if it 



I02 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

were seen, only it Is not seen. It Is like the light waves in 
ether or the sound waves in air. The wind may be blow- 
ing through the bare branches of a forest and the sound 
waves, or undulations, or rhythms of condensation and 
rarefaction of the air may be there just the same, but 
there Is no sound if there Is no human ear there to trans- 
late those vibrations Into sound. Just as the ear is to the 
air vibrations, turning them into sound, so is conscious- 
ness to the Idea and turns It into a visual auditory or other 
image. And just as the air waves are there in the forest, 
or the thunderbolt In the tempest, and are not sound waves 
for the sole reason that there is no ear to hear them, and 
yet they are perfectly capable of being heard just as soon 
as the man or animal comes along; so the idea is in the 
part of the mind of which we are not conscious and exists 
in that unrecognized part in exactly the same form, 
barring only the condition that It is not cognized. 

Just as we know that there is a world full of things 
which we cannot see, and know we cannot see either the 
things themselves or even pictures of them, so now in this 
twentieth century we know that the mental activities which 
enter our consciousness come into it out of a world of 
mental activities which each of us has in his own person- 
ality, and that this world of mental activities is as large 
in comparison with consciousness as is the world of all 
outdoors large In comparison with the confines of our own 
private and personal, individual indoors. Just as every- 
thing that exists In the world at the present time exists 
out of doors to us except what is in our own house, so 
everything that has ever happened within the range of 
our sensation exists for us in that outdoor world of our 
unconscious personality which surrounds and upholds the 



OLD AND NEW PSYCHOLOGY 103 

little domicile in which our consciousness is at home. In 
a new sense we may say that each person lives in a world 
of his own isolated from every other person's world. 
This world is the world of his own mental activities, — at 
one time conscious, but now unconscious, — a world of 
which ordinarily he knows as little as the average person 
does of the earth and its different continents and oceans. 
As we walk on a plain the horizon is about twelve miles 
away from our eyes at their height of about five feet. 
This is a very small part of the entire surface of the 
earth, which is four million times as great. And if this in- 
dividual does not travel there is not one chance in four 
miUIon of his knowing at first hand even the existence of 
the rest of the earth. 

About the same probability has always existed that we 
should ever become aware of the fact that we had any 
mental activity of which we are not conscious. I am quite 
aware that we are unequally conscious of different things 
— for Instance, those objects near the circumference of the 
field of vision we do not so clearly cognize as those right 
in the centre of the field. The dimly or faintly cognized 
are said by some writers to be subconscious or only partly 
conscious. What I refer to Is the absolute non-existence 
in consciousness of certain ideas, and indeed most ideas 
for the greater part of the time, and their continuous 
existence in an absolutely unconscious state, but their com- 
plete existence and activity in every respect save the one 
exception of their not being In consciousness. 

I have given (page 23) an Illustration of a mental 
activity which was utterly unconscious, but which formed 
an integral part of a stream of consciousness which was 
very vivid. I offer here an example of a sensation which, 



104 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

by the power of the unconscious wish, has been rendered 
imperceptible, that is, unable for a time to enter conscious- 
ness. I am looking at a table full of objects, and am 
looking for my box of matches which I know is there in 
full view, though I am unable to see it. I am conscious,^ 
in varying degree of vividness, of book or paper knife or 
inkstand or newspaper or what not. Yet there I stand 
totally unconscious of the box of matches with which I 
wish to light a pipe. The match box is making on my 
physical organism the same effect in every respect save 
one as if I were conscious of it. On the rods and cones 
of my retinae it is producing the same commotion as the 
wind in the forest branches with no ear there to hear it. 

There is of course a cause why this match box should 
be concealed from my consciousness. I have injured my 
nerves by smoking too much and my unconscious mental 
activities are in a sense uniting in an attempt to make me 
smoke less. Does it seem that we are merely using rhetor- 
ical figures in speaking of the unconscious mental activi- 
ties uniting to produce an effect? Are we merely person- 
ifying what has not a personal individuality as we per- 
sonify the storm when we say it strode across the valley 
and climbed up the mountain side ? On the contrary, we 
are speaking literally and not figuratively about the ele- 
ments out of which the real human personality is actually 
made. But Vv^hen I stand in front of my study table 
looking for, but not seeing, my box of matches, I am 
giving a good example of the mental state which is uncog- 
nized or unconscious, and which even so is making on the 
nervous system as much impression as if it were cognized 
or conscious. 

If one state of mind can be unconscious and yet 



OLD AND NEW PSYCHOLOGY 105 

operative, any and all others can be and probably are quite 
as active and quite as unconscious. In fact, modern psy- 
chology shows us that all the mental states we ever had, 
and possibly some we never had ourselves but inherited, 
are collected in the part of the mind of which we are 
unconscious and there, organizing themselves under the 
urgencies of the instincts, constitute a body of mentality 
to which has been given the name of the unconscious. 
Other proof of the causative activity of the unconscious 
factor of our minds is not lacking. In fact, not only is it 
not lacking, but it is so copious that it is a wonder it was 
not seen centuries before. 

We began, at the outset of this section, by regarding 
consciousness and the unconscious as a continuum, in which 
It is impossible to say exactly where the one stops and the 
other begins, but in which there are states so profoundly 
unconscious that they never can be reached, so to speak, 
by the light of consciousness, yet they have a controlling 
effect on the conscious life. It is more pictorial, however, 
to regard the relations of the unconscious to the conscious 
life more as those existing between two levels of society 
in humanity. Take, for example, the highest which we 
may imagine as representing a king, and the lowest which 
represents a dweller in a slum in the king's capital city. 
The submerged tenth does wish to see and interview the 
king, would like in short to live on the Easy Street where 
the king's palace is, and, like the militant suffragettes, 
continually makes attempts to enter the king's presence. 
But there are many persons between the king and the 
lower level of society, effectually keeping them out from 
his presence. 

We must imagine that there are mental activities as 



io6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

much undesired by the conscious mind of every one of us 
as are the lower levels of society undesired by the king, 
and that these mental activities are kept down in the 
unconscious portion of our minds. If ever they come in 
by any chance, they are immediately thrust back, just 
as the man or woman of the lowest stratum of society 
would be hustled out of the king's presence by appointed 
officials, if perchance such an undesirable found entrance 
to the royal presence. The undesirable person is crowded 
back out of the royal presence. The undesirable thought 
is "repressed" from consciousness. Both are contin- 
uously pushing on toward the place from which they have 
been ejected. 

iWhy Thoughts Push Outward 

The reason that the thoughts are pushing out toward 
consciousness is that they are (as is all mental life) con- 
cerned with external reality; and the means for reaching 
external reality are the motions and activities of the body, 
reports of which are immediately made to consciousness 
by the afferent sensory nerves. The type of thoughts most 
concerned with eternal reality is that which would quick- 
est change external reality into itself, and that is the use of 
matter for the formation of new and more individuals — 
in other words, the mental activity most likely to come up 
into consciousness is that which is concerned with repro- 
duction of species. This is the case because the reproduc- 
tive urge is the one which is the most perpetual and insis- 
tent, and it is natural that thoughts of, or based on, the 
action of reproduction should be the thoughts most spon- 
taneously arising from the unconscious. 



THE CENSOR 107 

The Censor 

However, as the development of human society has 
been such as to give in all ages and places a greater value 
to the performance of other acts than the instinctive act 
of procreation, there has sprung up universally a resis- '^ 
tance against mere reproducing and eating. It has been 
universally felt that a race devoted to those two aims 
solely is not different from animals of lower orders in 
whom there is no other activity worthy of the name. But 
wherever the resistance against the mere following of the 
passions called animal has come from, it exists and has 
been the cause of all the strictly human phases of human 
life. We are not concerned here with the origin of this 
difference between animals and man. Here we have 
to do only with the fact of it and the way it is accomplished 
by the conscious mind. There are not plenty of conscious 
resistances against crass sexuality. In fact, the resistances 
against a purely animal life are those of conscious- 
ness primarily. The barrier set against purely animal 
thoughts, which continually strive to come into conscious- 
ness both in thoughts and in acts without thoughts, has 
been fitly compared to a censor who examines communi- 
cations between people and deletes matter which is con- 
sidered unsuitable for communication. So it is customary 
to say that the thoughts (wishes) of the unconscious which 
are solely concerned with material sustenance are cen- 
sored. And in order to pass the censor they are disguised 
or costumed. 



io8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Mechanisms as Modes of Psychic Action 

What causes us to see a similarity between some par- 
ticular person's face and some animal's head? Or 
between a camel and a ship? These similarities are all 
very plain. The person's face and the animal's are alike 
because they possess certain features in common — two 
eyes (even a fish), a nose (even a cat), a mouth (even 
a caterpillar), and so on; and we see a likeness in the 
general impression because it really is there, and we can 
become conscious of it at once. 

There are other similarities based on an identity of Im- 
pressions and by most people perceived below the thresh- 
old of consciousness, but for those who have studied the 
impression analytically, quite consciously perceptible. A 
clear example of this is the quality of certain language 
which Is called onomatopoeia, a sort of Imitation, by the 
quality of the word, of qualities of things denoted. Such 
a quality of the words causes them to have a peculiar 
appropriateness to represent certain Ideas. This poignant 
character of certain words when used in certain connec- 
tions is due to the fact that theirsoundortheirkinaesthetic 
effect while being spoken Is like the sound or the feeling 
of the things denoted. 

Much of the charm of poetry Is caused by this type of 
imitative quality not only In the ancient languages, where 
in Greek, 

AaifAOvirf asi /asv oisai ovds (X€ XtfOoD, 

Daimoni | e a | ei men o | ieai ou | de se | letho 

a line consisting almost entirely of vowels, very well repre- 
sents the snarling voice of the enraged Zeus, or in Latin: 



MECHANISMS AS PSYCHIC ACTION 109 
Atque rotis siimmas levibus perlabitiir undas, 

by Its harmonies represents the very sound of the lapping 
of waves on the bow of the vessel, but also in English, 
where, for instance, Coleridge in three words puts vividly 
before the reader's mind the sound of the dropping of 
water on the deck of the marooned ship 

From the sails the dew did drip, 

and where Tennyson represents the sounds of a bright 
summer afternoon in : 

The moan of doves in immemorial elms 
And murmuring of innumerable bees. 

In the following example from the " Ancient Mariner " 
the feeling of the words in the throat as they are being 
uttered is very like the feeling which they describe : 

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked."^ 

But in the psychical mechanism which I will first men- 
tion the identity is not merely a passive one of impression 
but is an active one of behaviour. We react to one situa- 
tion as we would to another. A similarity in the environ- 
ment produces a similarity in the reaction to it, more or 
less analogous to the similarity which the preceding illus- 
trations show between the sound of the word and the 
sound of the thing denoted by the word, and which, even 
though an unpercelved similarity for most people, pro- 
duces a different reaction or attitude toward the words 
themselves. They have a deeper effect simply because 

* Cf. Tennyson: "Laborious Orient ivory, sphere in sphere." 



no THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

•^ they set in motion the unconscious perception of simi- 
larities. This unconscious perception produces a con- 
scious result, but it is not an intellectual process when it 
emerges into consciousness. It is an emotional state of 
diffused pleasure, having as a basis the perceived simi- 
larities. This is quite in accordance with the genesis of 
emotions, for the majority of the emotions are of uncon- 
scious origin. 

y . . 

Origin of Pleasure from Similarity 

We see that this must be so if we imagine how the 
earliest emotions In Infancy connected with the self- 
preservative Instinct took place at the time of the second 
feeding at the breast. The exhaustion of the nutriment 
absorbed in the infant's system after the first feeding pro- 
duced a feeling of hunger which became one verging upon 
pain, and the restoring of the infant to the breast for its 
second meal produced a sensation in the first place of 
similarity as so many. If not all, of the sensations of touch, 
suckling, deglutition and satiety were identical Avith those 
of the first meal. The effect on the infant of this first 
and second experience of the world is such as to give a 
very strong emotional tone of pleasure to the situation of 
similarity in itself and to cause similarity to play a very 
important part In causing pleasure In after-life. There is 
also, in mere similarity of situation, an ease and facility 
of effort which creates a sense of superiority, a feeling for 
which the ego continually strives, so that it is not surpris- 
ing to find It governing a great deal of later choice. The 
easy act is the one which gives the individual the greater 
sense of power. 



IDENTIFICATION iii 

In the course of development of the child's psyche there 
comes a time when, by virtue of the cognizance of similar- 
ity, or by analogy, the child sees the similarity between 
itself and other things, persons and children. It sees the 
likeness between a bundle of rags and a doll, between a 
stick and a boat, between a stone and a dock. It sees the 
analogy between persons and, of prime importance here, 
between itself and other persons. Possibly through 
learning the use of the words " me " and " my," it con- 
fuses these ideas and gets the notion that " what is my 
must be m^/' a very natural confusion and one common 
to all nations and ages, and quite parallel with the notion 
that there is some essential causal connection between 
the word and the existence of the thing it denotes. 

But if " my " be " me," then my father is me, my 
mother is me, my dog is me, my horse is me, my pail and 
shovel in the ocean's sand are me, and it is but a step from 
that to the identification of myself with anything under 
heaven. The particular harm in one's thus identifying 
himself with other persons or with things is that one 
attributes the same fortune or misfortune to both. The 
inmate who identifies himself with Napoleon or Jesus 
Christ is doing nothing different from the child who iden- 
tifies itself with its doll, but he is doing it to so extravagant 
a degree that we make him an inmate. 

Identification 

The mechanism called identification, based on similar- 
ity, is an unconscious mental process which underlies 
a great deal of conscious thinking and acting. One 
identifies oneself with other persons and things in 



112 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

such a way that those persons or things are regarded 
as a part of oneself. Indeed it is, when we consider it 
closely, a difficult problem to decide where the average 
person conceives his ego to end and the external world 
to begin. Physically our digestion identifies our food 
with our bodies literally. Mentally we regard certain 
parts of ourselves as more intimately ourselves than 
other parts. For example the attached parts of our 
finger nails are more closely a part of us than are the 
unattached parts which we cut off from time to time and 
our hair is not so intimately a part of ourselves as our 
eyelashes. Furthermore, some of our possessions we iden- 
tify with ourselves much more than we do others. A 
pocket-knife or a purse, one suit of clothes or another, 
or In the case of a wealthy man one of his residences may, 
to use a purely figurative expression, " contain more of 
him " than another. He has " put more of himself Into " 
one place than another. And so on with all the things 
with which we have any relation whatever. Many per- 
sons have written lists of the ten or a hundred " best 
books," which are only expressions of Identifications 
which they have made between themselves and the books. 
From our earliest years we identify ourselves with per- 
sons. In our desires, both conscious and unconscious, we 
identify ourselves on the one hand with our fathers and on 
the other with our mothers. Later there Is a perfectly 
normal Identification In the love we feel toward our life 
partners. A curious and Important fact not generally 
known is that when at a later date we have ceased to iden- 
tify ourselves with our parents as they are at present, we 
still retain in the unconscious the original identification 
which we formed at an early date with the parent as he or 



DEPTH OF VERY EARLY IMPRESSIONS 113 

she then was. A man, for instance, who at the age of five 
years or earlier identified himself with his father, and 
felt like him in every respect in which he knew him and 
strove to imitate him in all ways, will, at the age of forty, 
still maintain in his unconscious a tendency to make his 
identification with all men who resembled in the slightest 
degree what his father was thirty-five years before. 

In one man * who had a very stern, strict and aggres- 
sive father and identified himself with this early form in 
which his father existed for him even to the extent of 
acting both as aggressive father in his desires and com- 
pliant submissive environment in his acts, repeated the 
compliant submissive element of that combination when- 
ever he met a man who resembled his father in being ag- 
gressive. He would, when caught unawares, say " Yes, 
sir! " to a gruff waiter, or meekly obey a car conductor 
uncivilly yelling to the passengers to " move forward." 
All the time, however, he was repeating the aggressive 
element in his idea of what a man should be, and, wher- 
ever not himxself intimidated, was acting in an overbear- 
ing manner toward others, thus in both ways repeating 
the total pattern of behaviour at the age of forty, a 
pattern which his soul had had stamped on it at the age 
of five or under, by the particular father whom he hap- 
pened to have and whomx he came to know through the 
experiences which he then had of him. 

Depth of Very Early Impressions 

If these early impressions are so very formative, and 
so very lasting, it becomes at once evident that they must 

* Frink: Morbid Fears and Compulsions, p. 212. 



v/ 



114 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

be reformed as early In the child's life as possible. It has 
not been found possible to do much in the way of influ- 
encing the individual's unconscious before the age of 
puberty, except through the parents. In this case it is 
really the parents who should be educated, for they alone 
by their actions can cause the early impressions of their 
children, so important for their later welfare, to be whole- 
some and normal and prevent the damage which is In- 
flicted then and does not have its full force sometimes for 
over a quarter of a century. 

Education which should affect this very vital part of 
the individual's life should of course be directed to the 
child's entire environment from the earliest days of Its 
existence. As it is at present quite Impossible adequately 
to control this, the problem for education, if education is 
to be thorough and penetrating. Is to take the child, spiri- 
tually maimed in many cases by Its early environment, 
and reshape It during school and college days in such a 
way as to remove the multitude of wrong Impressions 
which are Inevitable now with most children and which 
affect the working of the mechanisms of which I have 
already mentioned only identification, the others being 
much less simple and much more subtle in their Influence 
on the conscious life.* 

Primary Identijications 

It should not be omitted here that the most universal 
identification is that of the boy with his mother (and that 
of the girl with her father), an identification which, 
being of opposite sex, has an effect not only upon the 

* This will be taken up in greater detail in the next chapter. 



IDENTIFICATIONS IN SCHOOL 115 

individual's choice of a love mate but also on the way In 
which he or she behaves to the mate. If the husband 
identifies himself with his mother he will identify himself 
in exactly the same way with his wife, and there then 
results in his psyche an objective identification of the two 
persons, mother and wife. When, therefore, a husband 
behaves toward his wife as a child should toward its 
mother, expecting from the wife in all ways exactly the 
kind of tenderness which he originally received from his 
mother, he fails to act in every respect as a man should 
act toward his wife. The same statement can be made, 
mutatis mutandis, about the attitude of the wife toward 
her husband, determined as it is by her identification, first 
of herself with her father and with her husband and 
then of her father and her husband. 

Identifications in School 

It may be asked at this point what can be done by the 
teacher in school to correct the undesirable element in 
these identifications. In college the faculty adviser can 
of course go specifically into the details of this and the 
other mechanisms, but In school that will of course be 
impossible. But the teacher, if made aware of this simple 
mechanism, can act toward the pupils in such a way as 
to train them away unconsciously, in a small degree to be 
sure, from the excesses of this identification and prin- 
cipally by means of Inducing them to become as Indepen- 
dent in their work as possible. Children tend to Identify 
a woman teacher with the mother and to seek from her 
the sympathy and help which they early received from 
their mothers, and a teacher, with the laudable desire of 



ii6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

being loved, will tend, unless she realizes the weakness 
which she is perpetuating in her wards, to over-accentuate 
the helpfulness which is so highly appreciated by the 
pupil. 

The earliest task imposed upon the child in school 
should therefore be that which he can accomplish by his 
own unaided efforts. The identification of the task with 
the teacher is almost universal and is the initial mistake. 
This identification takes place in several ways. It is seen 
in the very common phenomenon already mentioned that 
the task is accomplished for the teacher, and the chief 
pleasure and reward for the child comes from the praise 
and affection bestowed by her on the pupil, and, more 
important still, the fact that the child likes and does well 
in those studies where the teacher is personally attractive 
to the child. Here the task is identified with the teacher 
in the most concrete form, and it is clear that the elements 
in the child's performance which should make for his 
independence are reduced almost to nothing and its educa- 
tive force almost annihilated in proportion to the extent 
of the identification. The first effort of the teacher should 
therefore be to change the attitude of the child toward the 
task and encourage his independent activity toward the 
world of reality, the only taste of which procurable within 
the cloister of the school is the feeling on the part of the 
child that he is mastering a part of something which is 
external to himself. This will not be the case if he iden- 
tifies the task with the teacher. 

In this connection it is an unfortunate fact that the 
early tasks of the school are generally those in which he 
is almost unable to express any individuality different 
from other children's. When, for instance, the same ten 



IDENTIFICATIONS IN SCHOOL 117 

examples In arithmetic are given to a class of forty chil- 
dren, and the forty sets of answers have to be exactly the 
same for each child, there is little scope for individuality. 
If the child wishes to be individual and make his work his 
own and different from other children's he must have 
different answers to the examples — answers which are 
called wrong! The effect is no less undesirable, even 
though it be inevitable, just as any lock step is undesir- 
able, though it be the only or the easiest means of accom- 
plishing what seems to be the purpose of public education. 
From this point of view we see identification in another 
of its aspects, the identification of the pupils each with 
the other, a form of this mechanism which is seen at 
its highest degree of development in a flock of sheep. 

From the teacher's own point of view identification of 
the objective kind is of the greatest importance, as It 
unconsciously makes him Identify the pupils with each 
other, and prevents him from regarding them as individ- 
ualities themselves. It Is unlikely that the teacher will 
be able to correct his own defective attitude toward his 
pupils if he is unacquainted with this mechanism and Its 
operation in his own unconscious thoughts and acts. 
Identification is the easiest method of mental procedure. 
It becomes automatic and gives the greatest feeling of 
power because it seems to enable him to handle forty per- 
sons as one. In Identification the similarities are selected 
and emphasized and the differences are Ignored, no matter 
what may be their real practical Importance. When the 
teacher realizes that identification is one of the main 
modes of unconscious thought and not only that it Is 
operative In his pupils but also In a large measure In 
himself and in all other teachers, he will better understand 



ii8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

what his own specific problems are with regard to the part 
he is to play in the education of the young. 

He will all the more keenly feel the necessity of an 
individual study of his pupils and will be enabled to make 
the greater allowance for his own actions and theirs. 
He will realize that, while a certain amount of identifica- 
tion is necessary in all human thinking, in the formation 
of abstract ideas, he is by virtue of his knowledge of 
analytic psychology in a position to measure the amount 
of identification in himself and in other teachers and adjust 
his own actions accordingly. To what extent does he 
identify his pupils with each other? How much dis- 
tinctive individuality does each possess for him? How 
far does he allow the pupils to identify with himself the 
subject-matter which he teaches, and how intensively 
does he strive to develop to the best of his abihty the 
pupils' independence of himself, of the school, of their 
parents? 

Twb varieties of identification of the individuality with 
externals are known as projection and introjection, pro- 
jection being known as objective and introjection as sub- 
jective identification. The commonest form of this 
mechanism is the projection of a reproach. Frequently 
it is the only explanation of certain forms of suspicion. 
All children and many adults act as if they believed that 
others knew what was going on in their own minds.* 

Projection 

If a child has done something for which it feels guilty, 
it will be very difficult for it not to show some sign that it 

* Cf. p. 124. 



PROJECTION 119 

feels conscience-smitten, and It will Itself be filled with the 
feeling that other people must know something about the 
mischief and blame It just as It blames Itself. Conscience 
therefore, which Is the voice of their fathers and mothers 
heard In rtallty In earlier days, but now heard in Imag- 
ination, forces them to think that other people are blam- 
ing them, when it is really their own consciences that are 
accusing them. In such a case there Is an identification 
between the personality of the child and the personality 
of the other person. It is called an objective identifica- 
tion because the thoughts which originate solely in the 
child's mind are attributed to another's mind. Of this 
the child Is unconscious, and the result Is a self-deception 
on the child's part. If we should call the child the subject 
and the other person the object, then this form of identi- 
fication is called objective for the reason that the mind 
state is attributed by the subject to the object. 

It is an everyday occurrence and regularly unconscious 
in the majority of people. It is almost Impossible for some 
people to free themselves from this form of Irration- 
ality, but the less people are governed by reason and the 
more by emotion, the more difficult It Is to prevent this 
form of identification. It is quite true, too, that a certain 
amount of identification of the objective kind Is of great 
social value, as It Is the basis for true sympathy, and for 
a great many of the finer sentiments of love. A mother 
identifies herself with her children and is pained with 
them and rejoices with them. The identification of 
mother and daughter Is given poetical expression In the 
beautiful and familiar passages from the Book of Ruth. 



I20 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Introjection 

y If the feelings and thoughts of the subject are identi- 
fied by the subject with those of the object, we call it 
objective identification or projection. If, on the other 
hand, the feelings and thoughts or other circumstances of 
some other person are objectively and definitely pictured 
and are identified by the subject with the subject's own 
mind-states or other conditions, then we have introjection 
or subjective identification. 

This is exemplified familiarly by the state of mind 
many people acquire while reading books or articles 
about diseases. Having gained an idea from the book 
or magazine about the symptoms of the disease, they 
introject it into themselves. Projection would work the 
other way. They would then. If they had some uneasi- 
ness themselves, instinctively Imagine that everyone else 
had the same. It will be seen that introjection is a sort 
of Imitation, in causing an Individual to change so as to 
be like a model which has been held up to him. Thus 
biographies and histories are useful means for an advan- 
tageous employment of the natural trend toward sub- 
jective identification or introjection. It might be said 
that this unconscious mechanism is the basis on which Is 
set all the academic education of a formative or cultural 
type, and is the major premise on which the entire educa- 
tional syllogism rests. If we teach geometry, it Is with 
the implication that the clearness and accuracy and finality 
of Its theorems will be introjected into the mind of the 
pupil. When we give the pupils literary masterpieces to 
read, it is with this Idea alone, that the excellences of the 
literature in form and matter may be introjected into the 



INTROJECTION 121 

mind of the pupil. And it is so introjected, and the 
effect of the process is complete and total, the only diffi- 
culty being that while the introjection inevitably takes 
place, its effects are not at once perceptible to teacher and 
parent. An immediate projection is naively expected by 
educators in the form of a mental expression which shall 
show the instantaneous impress of the form of the lit- 
erary masterpiece. In the composition or essay the state 
of mind of the pupil should be projected upon some 
external object, say the air or the paper; and should show 
all the qualities that have been introjected by the teacher 
from the masterpiece. This might be regarded by the 
most rational as a prodigious projection on the part of 
the educator, and I have seen not a few teachers who 
attribute to the pupil a great deal of the academic mental 
viewpoint which teachers themselves have, and are as 
unsettled by their subsequent recognition of the discrep- 
ancy between their insulated views and the actual con- 
ditions as is any neurotic by his occasional actual contact 
with the world of reality. 

We give the pupil Latin to learn partly so that he may 
the better understand the structure of English, which is 
fifty per cent fossilized Latin. We try to show him the 
pretty shapes formed by the fossils. Partly, however, 
we believe that a successful introjection can be effected 
through which the thought-forms of the ancient Romans 
may be assimilated by the modern American boy or girl, 
and the structure of their cogitations much strengthened. 
As we ourselves do in reading a book or a magazine 
article about diseases, we expect the student to do, in 
getting the ideas as they exist in external reality and 
subjectively identify a goodly number of them with his 



122 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

own mental states, and show us Immediately the effect on 
him so that we teachers who are standing impatiently 
by, with tapes and rulers, may take a measure of the 
effects we have produced on him. When, however, we 
fully realize what a long-winded and difficult proposition 
it is for a trained psychologist to discover and modify 
any of the mechanisms of the unconscious, we shall ap- 
preciate how ridiculous are some of the expectations of 
the educator. 

But to return to a serious consideration of the dif- 
ference between projection and introjection. We have 
seen that projection is the attributing of an external origin 
to that which was really only a mental state. This does 
not imply always that the person so projecting is in any 
way abnormal. We all do it, and do it daily. Much 
that we see is only in our own minds, and in general 
we do not err in attributing it to external reality, for 
though it is not really there it is as good as there because 
it is there as far as we are concerned. This is true of a 
great many of the qualities attributed to music, art and 
literature, it is true of a great many qualities which we 
attribute to persons we love or admire, and the actual 
non-existence of the qualities as an objective reality is 
not only of no moment, but our unconscious self-decep- 
tion in this line is of value to us in making the world 
livable. But it is only when the qualities which we 
attribute to external persons or things are disproportion- 
ately exaggerated that we come to grief. Then projec- 
tion becomes a disease itself and requires heroic measures 
if it is to be cured. 

It has been said that projection is a mechanism by 
which the individual psyche defends itself against the 



INTRO JECTION 123 

unpleasant situations of life and originates at the time 
when the infant first makes a distinction between himself 
and the external world. There is inaugurated at that 
time a mental connection between things that cause pain 
or discomfort and external objects. Things which are 
unpleasant are In a sense rejected by the unconscious 
mind of the child, and because they are thus rejected 
are considered as not a part of the self but a part of 
what is opposed to the self — a part, in other words, of 
the real externality which makes bumps and hurts of 
various kinds. Thus when at a later date the Individual 
Is led by his unconscious to do something instinctive 
which society disapproves and he Is mildly or severely 
condemned by society, or by his conscience the represen- 
tative of society in his own soul, he as instinctively tends 
to project the whole incident and regard the act not as 
his own but as another's. 

It is even more so with thoughts. Every person has 
thoughts which emanate from the unconscious and are 
the conscious forms of unconscious desires. Those 
thoughts. If they appear In the form of criticisms of his 
own conduct, which Is a very common way for them to 
appear, are cast, so to speak, in the character of some- 
one else — someone, for Instance, who would be likely 
to criticize the action in question, or who the individual 
supposes would be likely to do so. If a person feels that 
someone else would criticize or blame him for doing 
some act — such, for Instance, as riding on a public con- 
veyance without paying fare, or taking an undue propor- 
tion of profit in the sale of merchandise — it is ten to one 
that the criticism Is more subjective than objective. Of 
course any sensitive and high-strung Individual is likely 



124 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

to do that, and it Is only when the thing becomes ex- 
cessive, and Interferes with other activities that it be- 
comes abnormal. The absolutely matter-of-fact person 
does not In these circumstances have the Idea of criticism 
or blame occur to him In this connection. The mere 
fact that the idea occurs is enough to prove that it is 
of subjective origin, and not a true experience from 
the outside world, contributed by someone else. In the 
case where a degree of censure falls upon a person not 
showing this projection mechanism, such person reacts in 
a totally different way. He stoutly denies the existence 
or the importance of the act or its significance, or if 
it be merely a thought that occurs to him, he dismisses 
it as mere nonsense and is not troubled by It further. 
But, in the person with a tendency to project reproaches, 
the criticism Is falling on a very receptive soil and takes 
root and thrives, and as the individual is not acquainted 
wth the idea that many reproaches are solely of internal 
origin, he thinks that other people may be thinking ill 
of him. 

Mechanism of Blame * 

Perhaps here would be an appropriate place to in- 
dicate some of the corollaries deduclble from this prin- 
ciple with regard to the placing of blame, to the utterance 
of censorious criticism, and to the question of punish- 
ment. Believing that an error is but the miscarrying of 
a wish to create, one cannot consistently attribute blame 
to anyone, man, woman or child, nor say that any act 
is a fault. Entirely aside from the very Important psy- 
chological consideration that the attributing of blame to 

* This illustrates the projection of a reproach, mentioned page ii8. 



MECHANISM OF BLAME 125 

anyone Is concentrating the attention on the destructive 
aspect of his act, magnifying It In a way particularly 
gratifying to him, and satisfying in an ill-advised way 
his desire for personal attention, blaming anyone for 
what he has done once or habitually does is a very Irra- 
tional procedure for a teacher who believes that many 
acts are caused by unconscious thoughts, for the reason 
that no person who has not been introduced to his own 
unconscious and shown a method of controlling It, can be 
held responsible for what it makes him do. This fact 
does not of course release a pupil from real responsi- 
bility for his conscious acts done from conscious thoughts. 
It only places the responsibility for certain errors of 
performance where such responsibility really belongs. If 
causation by the unconscious thoughts can be said to in- 
volve any responsibility. 

Thus a woman teacher would not be likely to feel any 
real resentment toward an adolescent boy for any mis- 
demeanour if she realized that his disorder was really 
prompted by love of herself, by a desire, unconscious on 
his part, to be sure, to have her attention, to have her 
look at and talk to him. If she knew enough about un- 
conscious mental mechanisms to realize tJiat^ she v/ould 
not blame him, but would be able to use that unconscious 
affection for her for the purpose of getting him to trans- 
fer his creative desires to things of the external world 
more appropriate to his own development than herself. 
If, on the other hand, she responds to his unconscious 
love-making, and attends to his " faults " and not to the 
work which he ought to be doing, she Is herself guided 
unwittingly by her own unconscious. For her interest in 
him, even her Irritation, is an expression of her own un- 



126 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

conscious wish to attract him. The more he can irri- 
tate her — and his unconscious is prompting him to do it 
as intensively as possible, for his unconscious is unwit- 
tingly attracted to her personality — the more will the 
situation be a personal one which approaches real love- 
making as its limit, and forgets or ignores the true pur- 
pose which brought them together. Of course the child 
is not supposed to know this, and the teacher does not 
always know it either, though from the time when the 
unconscious is recognized as a factor in education she will 
know it, and logically pursue a true educational aim, 
cease to be irritated and get real happiness out of the 
situation. 

Separation of Self from World 

As the infant begins its mental life with an innate 
identification of itself with the external world, the first 
thing it learns is that a part of this " self,'' as we might 
call the sum total of infantile experience, is independent 
of that part of the world which is most its personal sub- 
jective self, and is not under its control. This is equiva- 
lent to saying that a separation has to take place between 
the individual and the world as the first step in its edu- 
cation. The resolution of this primary identification 
continues and forms one of the important aims of aca- 
demic education in the earlier years. At the same time 
there is a secondary separation from the world, after the 
child makes the original separation, and learns the dif- 
ference between itself and external reality. This sec- 
ondary separation follows the finding out that things can- 
not always be controlled, but that generally thoughts can. 



IDENTIFICATION WITH WORK 127 

and consists in a retreat into self, a flight from reality, 
which unfits the individual for true wholesome adult con- 
tact with it quite as much as would the maintenance of 
the original infantile identification. 

The teacher has under his observation less of the first 
separation from the world than has the parent, for most 
of it takes place before the child comes to school, though 
not all. But during the later grammar grades and In the 
high school the secondary separation, or segregation, 
tends to take place and has constantly to be combated 
both by teacher and parent, so that the final aim Is In 
a sense the reverse of the initial aim of education, 
namely, to unite the individual with the world from which 
under certain circumstances he tends more and more to 
separate himself. Complete education, therefore, re- 
garded solely from the point of view of the individual's 
relation to the world of external reality, forms a cycle in 
which the individual is first separated from the world 
and then united with it, and in a sense separated from 
himself. This is accomplished by giving the thoughts 
and acts as external a reference as possible. 

^ Identification with Work 

This externallzation of the thoughts and acts may 
take place in every hour of every school day, or, from 
some technical error in school management, it may fail 
to take place. The pupil should be taught so to throw 
himself Into the work as, in a certain sense, to identify 
himself with it. He should be taught that a complete 
absorption in work, while he Is at work, will enable him 
to be completely absorbed in play, when playtime comes 



128 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

around. Lest it be inferred that I am here favouring a 
strenuosity of life which ill accords with the nervous 
natures of some pupils, I say that there should be some, 
if even a very little, time devoted to day-dreaming, pro- 
vided the pupil knows what he is doing and how dif- 
ferent in character it is from true thinking directed 
toward a definite goal. And it should not be inferred 
either that a programme can be made out, with a time- 
table, showing just so much directed thinking, so much 
play and so much day-dreaming, at times which are at 
the same hour and of the same length for all pupils of 
the same grade. For the programme and the time-table 
are as impossible, in the highest development of per- 
sonality, as are the uniform size and positions of school 
furniture. 

In order to develop the individual to his highest de- 
gree of personality, it vAW eventually have to come to 
individual methods in education. The teacher will have 
to know human nature so thoroughly, a knowledge 
which can be acquired only through a knowledge of the 
unconscious as well as of conscious life, that if he has 
more than one pupil he may be able to get at the root 
of any difficulties they may have in a time much shorter 
than he devotes to a whole class at the present time. 
His words will have to be few but telling. A class of 
twenty-five with recitations of forty^ve minutes each 
week for twenty weeks a term would give each child a 
whole week a term of individual instruction. How 
much could be told each child in that time, even by the 
most skilful teacher, provided that instruction were the 
aim and not education? How much could a child learn 
from a teacher in 225 minutes a term? Certainly to 



INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION TO PUPIL 129 

Improve the quality of the work the teacher does for 
the child, a great Improvement is necessary in the skill 
of the teacher. And of course the average child does 
not get 225 minutes a term, 450 minutes a year, from 
the teacher, because the classes are larger and the weeks 
are fewer in most schools. 

But if it could be proved that all the good the child 
gets from the teacher is received only in the times of 
personal, Individual contact which he does get, say about 
three minutes a day, it would seem quite worth while to 
change things so that he could get more. That is, pro- 
vided the teacher was so constituted as to be worth it. 
If as taxpayers we could see that more individual at- 
tention of teacher to pupil was fully worth all that was 
expended for it, it would be cheap at any price, which 
proves that as taxpayers we do not believe it. In other 
words, we believe that what the child gets in school he 
gets more from the building and from the other children 
and from his own efforts than he does from the teacher. 
But what a very unbusinesslike proposition that is! As 
well say that physicians could cure their patients in 
classes of thirty in a magnificent hospital building by 
hearing them recite their symptoms and telling them 
what to do and not to do. 

Individual Attention to Pupil 

And all the more is it necessary to give the children 
a greater amount of special attention and pay the 
teachers more liberally to enable them to give it, when 
it is realized that the problem in teaching is not alone the 
subject-matter of instruction and not alone the conscious 



^/ 



I30 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

thought of the child about the subject, but, more neces- 
sary than all that, is the teacher's knovv^ledge of the uncon- 
scious thoughts his own and the pupil's. This Is an 
entirely new science which the teacher of the near future 
will have to have, and be more proficient in, than in the 
'' subject " which he is supposed to know. Teachers 
are now examined in the theory of education, and to a 
certain extent in psychology, before they are granted 
licenses to teach. But the newer psychology, as applied 
to education, is something that soon will be demanded of 
every competent teacher. 

It is not to be denied that a few *'born teachers" 
have instinctively grasped the main principles of the 
newer psychology, and their work in the classroom is as 
good as a knowledge of the newer psychology could 
make it, but they are very few indeed. The state should 
take It upon Itself to see that the work of all teachers 
Is as good as that of the " born teacher." This can- 
not be done without a knowledge of the working of the 
unconscious part of the mind. 

' Compensation 

Any paired organ of the body naturally extends its 
activities or sharpens Its abilities If the other of the 
pair Is damaged or destroyed. Thus, on^ eye being 
Injured, the other frequently takes an added respon- 
sibility and does the work for two. One may even 
regard the different senses as paired In this connection. 
A person becoming blind gains greater acuity of hearing 
or greater sensitiveness of touch. 

This is exactly what takes place In those faculties 



COMPENSATION 131 

which we call mental but which, being based on the 
physical properties of matter, ought rather to be called 
material-mental or psycho-physical. Automatic adjust- 
ments take place all over the body all the time, appar- 
ently designed by nature to adapt the organism to the 
changing circumstances of its environment. Thus the 
approach of danger sensed by the unconscious produces 
many changes in the body of which consciousness is not 
aware. It sends an increased amount of sugar to the 
muscles, a substance which they consume in greater 
amount in more strenuous physical exertion. It aerates 
the blood by producing a more rapid respiration, and to 
the blood it furnishes also a principle which makes it 
much more likely to clot in case of a wound. 

Analogous to these physical preparations which go on 
In the body below the level of consciousness, there are 
many mental processes which take place below the thresh- 
old of consciousness. This is not to say that these 
mental processes take place as , preliminaries to an 
emotion after which the emotion ensues, but it is nearer 
the truth, to say that these processes are the emotion, 
and that part of the emotion of which we are conscious 
is but the effect of these unconscious mental processes 
upon the consciousness itself. 

What then, it may be asked. Is the advantage gained 
by calling these processes mental, and In what way are 
they to be distinguished from physical processes? In 
answer it may be said that the distinction between mental 
and physical processes Is a philosophical problem which 
is irrelevant to a chapter on psychology and still more 
so In a book on the application to educational prob- 
lems of the hypotheses of a new type of psychology. 



i^ 



132 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

A word should be said here about the deterministic 
Implications which will by some people be attributed to 
this mode of thinking. If our thoughts, as seems to be 
implied, are the effects of processes (whether mental 
or physical) which take place apart from consciousness 
and according to the laws of the physical world as studied 
by natural science, what hope is there that the individual 
is now, or ever will be, able to have a will free enough 
to control not physical matter, but even the coming and 
going and selection of his own thoughts? This is a 
topic which has been discussed for ages and belongs 
rather in a metaphysical treatise than in a psychological 
one. In this book I am attempting only an exposition of 
the principles of the newer psychology, an exposition 
which I hope will put some of our educational problems 
in a new light for other teachers as it has done 
for me. 

The physiological processes go on all the time in 
the body without coming into consciousness and being 
recognized for what they are. Undoubtedly they do 
produce a remote effect upon conscious mental states. 
We are all familiar with them. The presence in the 
stomach of ill-chewed, rapidly swallowed, inadequately 
salivated food causes at times a form of indigestion to 
which is attributed as an effect an emotional state appro- 
priately called sourness of temper. Yet we do not call 
the sourness of temper or any of the feelings or acts 
which it evokes and which are admittedly consciously 
perceived — we do not call these the perception of the 
indigestion. What is it that is felt? As well ask what 
is it that is seen when we look at a plum pudding. Do 
we see a white dish, with a brown and black mass on 



COMPENSATION 133 

It, over which hovers a pale blue vapour? Strictly speak- 
ing, we do not perceive any of those things until after 
we have learned what they are. 

Nor do we perceive either the unconscious or any 
of its effects as such until we learn what it is and what 
they are. The method of discovery and the nature of 
the inference by which the existence and qualities of the 
unconscious are deduced or inductively inferred is a 
matter of the deepest interest, but can only be touched 
upon here. It is somewhat similar to the mental pro- 
cesses by which the planet Neptune was first supposed 
by astronomers to exist, though invisible, and later 
seen In the calculated position when the telescopes of 
higher power were made. 

From the aberrant behaviour of certain planets the 
attraction of a larger, remoter Invisible body was 
inferred. Prom mental aberrations of our conscious 
states has been deduced the existence of the larger, and 
in a sense remoter, imperceptible psychic entity in the 
personality of each and every one of us. That is, the 
thoughts and actions are called aberrant, just as the mo- 
tions of the planets were, until the presence of the 
larger body was known. Then they were recognized 
(cognized again) as not in the least aberrant. They 
did not depart from the laws of motion. Therefore 
what astronomers did when they found that the so-called 
Irregularities of the planets' motions were not irregu- 
larities at all, except from a narrow point of view, was 
exactly what psychologists are now doing when they dis- 
cover that what have been called mental aberrations 
are not departures from natural law, but are illustra- 
tions of it. They were the working of a cause which 



134 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

had not yet been discovered or traced to its ultimate 
principle. For instance, many of the acts of insane 
persons have been attributed by the newer psychology 
to the fact that the insane are in a great many senses 
merely children of a larger growth and their actions 
are determined by a persisting infantility. 

The purpose of this long disquisition on these aspects 
of the theory of the unconscious is to lay the founda- 
tion for an understanding and insight into the mech- 
anisms of thought as they have been revealed by the 
more modern type of psychological research. 
V We have seen so far that ambivalence is that mental 
attribute which corresponds to the antagonism of 
forces in the purely physical realm, and is seen in the 
psychic sphere in such traits of general nature as the 
existence of love and hate in the same person for the per- 
son, at the same time, being thus an attribute of the 
emotional life. And we have just begun to discuss the 
attribute of compensation which we saw clearly exempli- 
fied in the physiological sphere In several types of action. 

A compensation is a conscious effect of an unconscious 
cause. Why not, then, call It merely an effect and not 
put another name to it? For the reason that in the 
concept of compensation the effect Is regarded as 
analogous to its cause and not of an entirely different 
classification. This analogy includes direct contraries. 
As is seen in the section on ambivalence (page 93), a 
strong desire for a certain person expressed in love will 
be turned instantly into hate, both of which enter con- 
sciousness, sometimes to the utter surprise of the per- 
son concerned. An old proverb says that a woman who 
hates a man either has loved, does love or will love 



COMPENSATION 135 

him. In a compensation, however, only one member of 
the analogy enters consciousness, while ambivalence 
keeps both members of the equation, both sides of the 
balance, so to speak, below the threshold of conscious- 
ness. It is only in the mechanism of compensation that 
one of the pair of activities appears in consciousness. A 
person will compensate with conscious actions for an 
unconscious desire, just as he will balance two con- 
scious desires and throw more impetus into , the one 
because it is a socially approved one, for the reason that 
he has already thrown more than he thinks he ought 
into the other, and he wishes to keep a certain balance 
between what he instinctively wants to do and what, 
from his experience of society, he thinks it wants him 
to do. By keeping an even balance in this way he 
satisfies his conscience and does not worry. 

A corollary of this compensating for an unconscious 
desire by means of a conscious one is that we have no 
conscious desires that are not compensations. It is quite 
evident that as the unconscious desires are the pressure 
of the animal instincts, against which society has set up 
numerous barriers, we should, if we followed these all 
the time, do practically nothing of all the complicated 
web of human activities which now we are weaving. If 
no barriers of society whatever opposed us, we should 
have no compensatory mechanisms such as we now have. 
There would be no restraint or repression. But the 
moment we have any restraint opposed against us, we 
attempt to fulfil our desires in some other way, pro- 
vided we cannot overcome the restraint. If a runaway, 
or a river, comes to a wall or a dam, he goes over it or 
around it if he cannot knock it down. The going around 



136 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

it is the compensation for the going over, which he (or 
it) cannot do. 

Substitution 

Thus through compensation, which means quite as 
much libido directed against another object when it is 
obstructed by one object, we necessarily make use of 
substitutes. In other words, a strong desire is for some 
definite thing, unless it is for promiscuous muscular 
activity, and then kicking or running or swimming will 
satisfy. But It is a familiar human experience that when 
we want any specific thing it Is possible to transfer that 
desire to some other thing. In this case we do not so 
much compensate as substitute. Generally a compen- 
satory mechanism is a reaction in consciousness to an 
unconscious stimulus, while a substitution is the replace- 
ment of one thought or act In consciousness by another 
thought or act in consciousness. Furthermore the term 
compensation is more extensive; that is, a long and 
complicated course of action may be called a compensa- 
tion mechanism, while a single idea or mannerism of 
action — in other words, a small unit of activity — Is likely 
to be called a substitute formation. 

Both compensations and substitutions are mediated 
through mere displacements of ideas. One Idea dis- 
places another in the mind and one Idea Is substituted 
for another idea as the goal-idea of a desire. This is 
not the same as saying that one Idea follows another 
in the mind, each idea giving way before, and in that 
sense being displaced by, its successor. That would be 
a purely descriptive statement of what actually takes 
place in the mind because our stream of consciousness 



SUBSTITUTION 137 

is never other than one Idea following another. But 
a displacement or a substitution is an idea which takes 
the place of another idea in the mind at all times when 
that second idea, which we might call the original idea, 
would naturally (that is, if there were no repressions) 
appear in the mind. The original idea is a banished 
idea, not allowed to enter consciousness, and, as if It 
had a desire of its own to enter consciousness which it 
could satisfy vicariously, it sends its representative or 
proxy to act for it. Thus In displacement is implied an 
inability of the Idea which is displaced to enter con- 
sciousness, together with its being unknown for what 
it really is and frequently there is implied a power of 
the displaced, covered, shrouded, masked Idea to work, 
in the unconscious, physical 111 on the individual for 
whom It Is a masked idea, due no doubt to the indi- 
vidual's consequent inability to adjust it to the remainder 
of his personality, which as he cannot see it, he is unable 
to do. 

While one idea may be substituted for another as the 
goal idea of a desire, the desire remains the same, not 
In content but In strength. Heine said that the French 
put as much energy into their pursuit of liberty as ardour 
into the affection for their chosen brides, while the Ger- 
mans look upon liberty as they do upon their aged 
grandmothers. A man may devote his entire energy, 
which means his entire libido, to an abstract cause, or he 
may consume it In the love of a fair mistress. He may 
also. If the fair lady has rejected him, and he finds no 
physical outlet for his excited emotions, spend them 
upon himself. 



138 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Displacement 

In identification and compensation we have seen a con- 
scious thought displacing, or substituted for, an uncon- 
scious desire. Displacement is the generic term describ- 
ing these substitutions of conscious thought and action 
for the natural instinctive unconscious thoughts which, 
though continuously pushing forward toward conscious- 
ness, are transformed in such a way that they are 
acceptable to the social conventions of conscious life. 
The thought and action of which we are conscious in our- 
selves and in others is invariably a displacement, a dis- 
guise under which the unconscious wish passes the censor 
and enters consciouSjness, a disguise without which it 
would be opposed. Only those thoughts and actions 
which are vigorously opposed as immoral when they 
enter consciousness, as they do occasionally as crime, 
heresy, etc., are the natural and undisguised unconscious 
wishes. 

The classroom actions of the pupil are disguised or 
substituted actions in almost every case. And we are 
constantly requiring the pupil to make substitutions In 
his own action for the actions which his unconscious 
wishes would cause him to perform. In a sense that Is 
what school and education are for. But we reason that 
a superimposed substitution will have the same good 
result as a naturally developed one. Here is an instance : 

It is quite true that a middle-aged man may sit gladly 
for hours (but not every man, at that) with a pen in his 
hand writing in a book, and an almost infinitesimal pro- 
portion of men will write books which will have an 
influence on the acts of their fellow-men. But to think 



DISPLACEMENT 139 

that the influential words are caused by the sitting still 
is an evident fallacy, and yet that is exactly what we 
are doing in schools everywhere. The position in which 
we put the pupil is analogous to that of the middle-aged 
writer, before a desk and holding a pen, and the reason- 
ing is exactly that of the savage who makes an image 
of his conception of a god and puts food before it. 
The savage thinks: This image will eat this food and 
be pleased with me and grant me a favour, exactly as 
I was pleased and did a favour for someone who set 
food before me. 

We seem to have reasoned the same way. Just as 
good may come from a mature man sitting at a desk, so 
will good come from the immature man sitting at a desk. 
And this is a mental displacement (identification) just 
as erroneous, but just as dynamic psychologically because 
it has produced the present classroom requirements, as 
is the identification which the pupil makes of the teacher 
with the stern father or mother, or which the teacher 
makes of the pupil in identifying him with a previously 
experienced disorderly one. Similarly when a nervous 
woman comes to a physician for treatment and one of 
the symptoms is an exaggerated solicitude for her mother 
or her children we have another displacement. Like 
all unconscious displacements it is the substitution of one 
idea for another. In the case of the nervous woman she 
replaced desire which was in her unconscious with Its 
opposite, anxiety, in her conscious life, and by the 
strength of her solicitude she expressed the real depth 
of her unconscious desire that her mother should die. 
By the sternness with which we repress the movements 
of the child do we similarly express the depth of our 



I40 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

unconscious desire to let him give full play to his Instincts 
and develop them In a rational manner. The exag- 
gerated concern of a daughter for her mother's health 
or of a mother for that of her children has frequently 
been found to be a conscious over-compensation for the 
opposite wish In the unconscious. I think our present 
Insistence upon uniformity and silence and motloniess- 
ness on the part of the school child Is similarly an over- 
compensation for our real unconscious feeling that they 
need to move more than they do. And of course the 
thing works out In the opposite direction. The child 
over-compensates for his unconscious desire to neglect 
lessons by an occasional over-vigorous spurt of accom- 
plishment. 
^ It may be said that a noticeably strong conscious tend- 
ency In any direction Is likely to Indicate the presence 
of an opposite tendency in the unconscious, much as a 
convexity on one side of a thin metal plate corresponds 
to a concavity on the other side. And In each case It 
Is really the same force which produces the unevenness. 
Any unevenness In character, or Idiosyncrasy or eccen- 
tricity is thus seen to be the work of unconscious forces, 
the conscious form In which they are displayed almost 
invariably being a displacement of some sort. 

Here we have reasoning by analogy carried out in a 
psychological and not a logical manner, and commit all 
the blunders which can be committed In so doing. Dis- 
placement is technically defined as the using of the 
wrong Ideas with the wrong emotions, or vice versa, the 
psychical putting of things in the wrong place. When 
the displacement reaches an extreme, as It does in cases 
which psychiatry calls anxiety hysteria, the emotions 



DISPLACEMENT 141 

which properly belong to certain ideas are taken away 
from those ideas entirely. The ideas are themselves 
repressed into the unconscious, but the emotions, v/hich 
cannot be repressed, are attached to other ideas which 
in normal persons are not associated with such strong 
emotions. 

If, for instance, a person is excessively afraid of 
snakes or of thunderstorms or of tunnels or of dogs or 
what not, and has a fear of them which other persons 
ridicule and which neither they nor the timorous person 
can account for, then they exemplify this displacement 
between idea and emotion. Similarly any complete 
inability on the part of any pupil to master a given task 
may be caused by a similar displacement. The emotions 
which are engendered by the task are quite dispropor- 
tionate to it. Therefore they belong not to it but to 
some other idea which, if the teacher knows enough, 
may be discovered and the excessive emotion may be 
disengaged from the task in question. 

I do not mean to say that there should be no emotion, 
no excitement, no liveliness in the schoolroom. All of 
these are necessary, both on the part of the pupil and 
of the teacher. In the pupils the emotions are properly 
expressed in activity which necessarily results in noise 
in the undraped room. I refer only to the type of 
emotion which is appropriate and which is seen in all 
schoolrooms where real honest effort is being made. 
There is no objection to frequent bursts of laughter, if 
they are the result of the pupils' perception of relations 
of the subject-matter, and not mere deriding the unsuc- 
cessful efforts of some supposedly stupid pupil. Of 
course it is unfortunate that we have not yet arrived at 



v^ 



142 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

the state of civilization where the physical activities can 
be more gradually tapered off and the sublimation of 
physical into mental energy is not authoritatively 
demanded at once. 

I know a high school, for instance, where the first 
experience of the incoming student is being required to 
sit for two hours and a half in the assembly hall, where 
absolute silence and motionlessness is sternly demanded, 
and the unfortunate child who forgets and talks to his 
neighbour is required to take a seat on the platform and 
be eyed by a thousand children as an example. I know 
of no house of public entertainment where people gladly 
pay money for a seat, in which the performance of two 
and a half hours is not broken three or four times and 
the audience is given an opportunity to relax. But In 
our present school system, so powerfully are we domi- 
nated by the silence of the printed page that we act as 
if we supposed that directed thinking could be immedi- 
ately produced by suppression of the physical expression 
of the undirected variety, all the motions of most chil- 
dren belonging in this class. 

In adult human life many of the most intensely 
interested persons are intense in certain directions by 
virtue of a displacement of over-compensation. Anti- 
vivisectionists frequently by their activity show an over- 
compensation for unconscious desire to inflict cruelty, 
the significant fact being that whether they were con- 
sciously or unconsciously cruel, they would be equally 
concerned psychically with the idea of cruelty, an idea 
which, to the ordinary person, has been outgrown with 
the other infantile attributes. Militant feminists, when 
women, are frequently giving expression by their execs- 



DISPLACEMENT 143 

sive militancy to an unconscious wish not to rule and be 
the equals of men but to be ruled and dominated by 
a man. Lynching Is another expression in consciousness 
of an unconscious desire for cruelty. Few members of 
a lynching party, If Interrogated, would admit that they 
took pleasure In the sufferings of the lynched person. 
They rationalize their actions as being of social value, 
saying that they wish to deter others, to hasten the slow 
steps of justice, etc. 

It will therefore be of the most vital importance for 
teachers In the schools of the future to have a means of 
Interpreting any peculiarities of behaviour on the part 
of the pupil, to the end that they may take measures 
to prevent the further development of that trend of the 
unconscious which Is indicated by the observed peculiar- 
ity. As sadism, or the unconscious desire to Inflict 
cruelty, is a perfectly natural and necessary element 
in the constitution of the child, but in normal develop- 
ment Is outgrown, any person giving evidence by his 
conscious words or acts of such an unconscious desire 
is but manifesting the fact that, in this respect, his 
development has been arrested. 

Accordingly It Is extremely Important, If education is 
to do the best for the pupil, for some steps to be taken 
to remove this unconscious desire or to develop It into 
one of the numerous forms which sublimated sadism 
takes, such as mastery, leadership, interest in medicine, 
surgery, etc. In his professional practice, many a 
surgeon has given a sublimation to the sadistic trend 
which otherwise would have led him to take pleasure in 
inflicting pain on other persons and thereby has attained 
a socially valuable gratification of the unconscious wish. 



144 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

The teachers of the future will be able to observe and 
control for the advantage of society this and other trends 
which give evidence of an irregularity in development. 

Thus we see one of the apparent inconsistencies of 
humans clearly accounted for. The person with an 
intense, because not seasonably outgrown desire, which 
Is yet unconscious, to inflict cruelty on man or animals, 
gets a reputation for an equally intense aversion to 
cruelty, to which, up to the present time, society has 
given its approval. It is quite evident here that conscious- 
ness and the unconscious are working together, but in an 
Inconsistent manner. The unconscious desires cruelty, 
but is satisfied with the contemplation of cruelty and the 
effects of cruelty In and on other persons. It is quite 
evident, also, where the displacement comes In, and that 
It is the displacement which enables the conscious and 
the unconscious mental activities to get on the same 
track. Cruelty Is what the mind is craving. In the case 
of the openly cruel man who becomes a criminal there 
occurs too, and without displacement, a uniting of con- 
sciousness and the unconscious in one direction, thus 
avoiding a conflict, but It Is a direction inimical to society 
and society checks it In what manner it can — at present by 
jailing or killing the cruel one. In the case of the per- 
son who Is unconsciously craving to inflict cruelty, there 
is a displacement. The mind feasts on cruelty, but, 
in order to gain the approval of consciousness, and of 
society, so that It can go ahead full speed, it displaces 
the infliction of cruelty from self to some other person. 
In the case of some surgeons the displacement is of 
another character, for Instead of the unconscious satis- 
faction being derived from the cruelty Itself^ the satis- 



DISPLACEMENT 145 

faction Is displaced (though not misplaced) to a 
satisfaction derived from the good results of the actions 
which cause pain. 

This Is the displacement of the teacher inflicting cor- 
poral punishment. The fancied good result of it replaces 
in his consciousness the unconscious gratification of his 
unconscious desire to Inflict pain. Because there is 
supposed to be a good result, the goodness covers in his 
mind the badness of the cruelty and contributes to the 
severity of the punishment. This applies of course to 
all sorts of punishment, and indeed Is the fundamental 
objection against punishment of any kind, whether in 
school or out. The justice of the retribution covers the 
desire to inflict pain and reinforces it, and the mind con- 
tinues to be directed toward the offence, which in many 
ways would better be Ignored entirely. 

Like the significance of the occurrence of ideas (page 
197), the significance of the mind's being unduly occupied 
with certain Ideas or feelings Is very great. In the 
sadistic persons above mentioned the idea of cruelty or 
Inflicting pain or punishment has seized and has, tem- 
porarily at any rate, full possession of the minds of the 
individuals in question. The very fact that a misde- 
meanour has been observed by a teacher Is sometimes a 
proof that the teacher has been unconsciously on the 
lookout for a chance to express his unconscious sadism; 
and the entire episode of detecting, and of recording 
and of administering punishment (beautiful phrase!) is 
an instance of a mild obsession of an Idea. The ideas 
that should be exchanged by teacher and pupil are 
English, arithmetic, etc., and progress — social service. 
None of these enters into the misdemeanour drama^ 



146 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

which Is therefore just so much lost time, and worse, for 
emphasis is thrown on the destructive instead of on the 
constructive element in the social relation existing be- 
tween teacher and pupil. 

^ Sublimation 

I have several times had occasion to speak of sub- 
limation, which Is a kind of displacement. When the 
surgeon displaces the gratification derived from inflcting 
pain onto that derived from the results of the inflicting 
of the pain, which are of advantage to society, he is 
sublimating a trend of the unconscious. This trend, 
if left unsublimated and allowed to come directly into 
consciousness as it does in the murderer, let us say, is 
opposed to society and renders him an outcast. The 
thoughts which precede the crime also segregate him 
from true relations with society even before the crime is 
committed. 

Sadism is only one of the many infantile traits which 
are manifested not only in but out of school, not only 
by children but by adults. Another very prominent trait 
^ is called " exhibitionism," or the desire to show off. In 
the actual Infant it is evinced in a delight in taking off 
clothes and running around naked. In adults this also 
occurs and in some morbid cases constitutes a crime. 
These are the two extremes of the impulse, both in an 
unsublimated form. These impulses of sadism and 
exhibitionism are what are called partial Impulses. They 
might better be called paired Impulses. Each one of 
them occurs always paired with the so-called ambivalent 
trend. For example, the impulse to exhibit one's person 



SUBLIMATION 147 

IS the ambivalent form of the Impulse to look at the 
persons of others. This tendency to peep has been 
given legendary expression In the character of the Peep- 
ing Tom in the story of Godlva. In that legend the 
attitude of society toward the adult who retains this 
infantile trait is expressed by the statement that he was 
struck bhnd. For looking at Diana in the bath, Actaeon, 
in Greek myth, was killed by the goddess' dogs. 

But the ambivalence Is evident. The desire to look 
presupposes a correlative desire to be looked at. The 
desire to take pleasure from inflicting pain on others pre- 
supposes a correlate In the desire to derive pleasure 
from having pain Inflicted on oneself. So that here we 
have two infantile psychic trends, both duplex (ambi- 
valent) in nature, and giving, when unequally outgrown, 
four broad classifications of undeveloped human char- 
acter. The child who grows up without losing its desire 
to exhibit Itself naked is seen in the woman who takes 
pleasure (unconscious though it may be) in the wearing 
of abbreviated attire. It may be said to be a general 
fact that women are more likely to show this trait than 
men, as is seen by the difference in the conventional 
clothing of men and women. 

So that the impulse to be seen, viewed in its passive 
aspect, may be counted as the feminine form of this pair 
of Impulses, both of which are, however, in every human 
psyche, even in adults, more or less sublimated. And 
the impulse to see, as an active trend. Is correspondingly 
a masculine trait, sublimated more or less in all humans, 
whether men or women. It should never be forgotten 
that before the age of puberty the characteristics of boys 
and girls are predominantly active and passive, but can- 



148 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

not be called really masculine and feminine traits. 
These traits are not fully developed in the individual 
until after making the choice of a love object. So that 
if we remember that these traits are partial trends or 
ambivalent or paired as I have called them, and that 
both are in their double or ambivalent form in both 
sexes, we shall have a clearer idea of the fourfold nature 
of humanity, any one petal of which, so to speak, may 
grow to an enlarged condition in either man or woman 
or all four be discarded or sublimated as they should 
be in the normally developed adult. In these they are 
outgrown or discarded if the individual grows up to be 
an average normal conventional man or woman with 
no striking peculiarities and doing his work without 
the desire for more than the usual applause and re- 
ward. 

If, on the other hand, a person is distinguished for his 
desire to appear in public, then his exhibitionistic trait 
has been more or less sublimated or made socially avail- 
able according to the real value placed on it by society, 
a value which sometimes cannot be immediately esti- 
mated. A great actor is an example of a successful 
sublimation of the exhibitionistic trend. But it is never- 
theless the sublimation of an infantile trait which is 
possessed by the average adult only In rudimentary 
form, like the appendix vermiformis. The sublimation is 
the employment by society. Society therein selects cer- 
tain individuals whom, so to speak, it licenses, by pay- 
ing them good salaries, to retain that particular infan- 
tile trait, for its amusement and recreation. Not only 
does society sublimate or raise up this trait in the great 
actor, but it may be equally well said, from the point of 



SUBLIMATION 149 

view of the actor himself, that he sublimates his own 
early tendency by employing it in a way which will give 
pleasure and profit to his fellow-men, as Indeed it would 
not, if it were not transmuted, by this subliming process, 
by being constantly directed with unremitting effort to 
the requirements of the social environment. Thus we 
may either say that the actor is lifted by society or that 
he raises himself by adapting his desires to the desires 
of society in such a way that he can continue to get 
pleasure from a source whence the average man has 
long since ceased to derive it — from being looked at. 
But whether the actor lifts himself or is lifted by society, 
the infantile desire is said to be sublimated. 

Just as In the case of the sadist, or person occupied 
with cruelty, the anti-vlvisectionist activities are dis- 
placement, so, in the case of exhibitionism, the histrionic 
activities are a displacement. The pleasure which the 
unsublimated desire would find In merely being looked 
at is reinforced by the idea that some other end than 
merely being looked at is being attained at the same 
time. The approval of society shown in its being willing 
to look and be entertained is a cover for the pleasure 
itself and under this cover the individual seems to get 
society's orders to go ahead full speed with the acting 
and the unconscious of the actor achieves the gratifica- 
tion of its desire. 

There is a difference in degree, however, between the 
sadist sublimated slightly to an antl-vlvisectionist or to 
an inventor of improved methods for executing criminals 
and the sadist who is sublimated greatly Into a very suc- 
cessful surgeon. Society does not grant the anti-vivisec- 
tionist a very great reward, either spiritual or material, 



I50 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

for his degree of sublimation, while to the surgeon it 
gives a very substantial recognition both in money and 
fame. I might go on and show that the exact parallel 
between sublimation and social approval is so exact that 
the sublimation of a trend of the psyche is nothing more 
or less than the selection by society of that particular 
trend for its own use or amusement. This shows very 
clearly the relation of society, not to the individual as a 
whole but to certain elements in his character; that is, 
society's relation to parts of individuals. For its own 
purposes society takes these traits in different indi- 
viduals and develops them or transmutes them into their 
sublimations. 

Another illustration of the sublimation of the exhibi- 
tion impulse is found in pictorial art. The sculptor, 
painter or draughtsman has transmuted his desire to be 
seen into a desire to have the work of his hands seen. 
By the analogical reasoning the work of the artist is in 
a certain sense himself. There lies the displacement in 
this case. The work takes the place of the worker. In 
his thought the worker is displaced by his work. In the 
work he can get a full gratification of his craving to 
be seen, a desire which is reinforced by the approbation 
which he may win from the public. His craving to be 
seen is uplifted by society from the crass infantile ex- 
position of his naked body in which he delighted when 
three or four years old to the sublimated form of ex- 
hibiting in a certain sense his naked soul, a sublimated 
form of exhibition because society, of which he is a part,^ 
has picked out this trait and marked it as useful for its 
purposes. 

The point of this lengthy analysis of the partial or 



SUBLIMATION 151 

ambivalent Impulses, one member of each pair being al- 
ways in the unconscious, Is that In one sense a real educa- 
tion is exactly this same sublimation of the natural In- 
stincts or, as will Immediately be seen, the socialization 
of the natural Instincts. Without this aim education Is 
indeed a misnomer, for it does not draw out and de- 
velop innate desires, adapting them to Its special needs, 
but superimposes a foreign body like a veneer. So that 
we now have something to add to the original definition 
of education with which we started. We began by say- 
ing that the purpose of education was to transform 
physical energy into mental energy, and we now see 
that to do it properly it has not only to be transformed 
but also to be adapted, that is, transformed according to 
a pattern which is made for it by society, or In other 
words sublimated. So that the aim of education Is the 
sublimation or adaptive transformation of physical into 
psychical energy. 

It is not necessary to suppose that a complete sub- 
limation of all the unconscious craving for life, love 
and activity can be or need be made in the case of each 
individual. Only the surplus energy, which Is Indeed 
very great. Is necessary to be sublimated. H. G. Wells 
in several of his books remarks upon the fact that much 
of the misery in the world comes from the surplus 
vitality of mankind and says that the great problem Is to 
turn it from destructive to constructive lines. 

It will be seen that this sublimation does not neces- 
sarily always Imply the transformation of the physical to 
the mental energy. Purely physical energy can be sub- 
limated without turning it into mental energy,. The 
physical work of the digger of ditches, which is pre- 



152 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

sumably the extreme type of socialized physical energy, 
is a sublimation in that it serves society, while if a man 
of equal physique spaded sand all day long on the sea- 
shore for the waves to wash smooth again, he would not 
be sublimating because his actions would not be related 
to society's needs. 

Thus sublimation is seen to lift an individual up out 
of the narrow limitations of his otherwise isolated self, 
and unite him with his fellows on a plane higher than 
that on which he would be living in solitariness. The 
digger of ditches does, to be sure, a certain small 
amount of mental work in digging along a line, but here 
the physical is so great in proportion to the mental that 
the latter can almost be ignored. It cannot be abso- 
lutely ignored, however, because it is only the fact that 
he is following the line that constitutes the social ele- 
ment of his actions. At the other extreme is the 
draughtsman in whom the physical energy is all trans- 
muted, save that portion which holds him in his chair 
and his hand in the proper position. Both the digger 
of ditches and the draughtsman are sublimating their ex- 
cess vitality, the former without and the latter with a 
transformation of physical Into mental energy. 

The transition from physical to mental activity can 
be made in an Instant; by man and by animals in the 
most natural situations it is made in a twinkling, as is 
Illustrated in the change from running to watching. In 
running we may say that all the energies of the organ- 
ism are directed outward; and when the animal sud- 
denly stops in some covert and crouches watching 
Intently to see if his pursuer has followed or missed his 
trail, we may say that only a small portion of his activi- 



SUBLIMATION 153 

ties are directed outward, only his vision. His energy 
is Instantaneously converted from purely physical to the 
nearest to mental this side of truly abstract thinking. 
Children at play similarly alternate between activity and 
passivity, In which there is observable a certain degree 
of mental activity. 

But the mentality contained in these passive inter- 
ludes in the rhythm of activity and passivity is very slight 
and rarely has the quality of directed thinking. Think- 
ing of the directed variety, however, is really a very 
strenuous activity, so that it is almost the equivalent In 
actual energy of a fight or a flight of the active kind. 
This is the kind of mental activity which in school we 
expect and demand that the pupil carry on. The 
transition from physical to mental activity of the un- 
directed kind Is readily made by all humans alike, young 
or old. It is taking place daily and hourly out of school. 
But in school we are looking for the impossible if we ex- 
pect to see the transition Instantaneously made from 
physical activity to directed mental activity. My idea 
is that. In the schools of the future, sublimation will be 
easily and normally effected to very high levels by com- 
bining physical activity and directed mental activity in a 
proportion such that at first the directed mental element 
will be very slight. The next grade of advance will 
lessen the former and Increase the latter very slightly 
and so on until the proportions are exactly as desired. 
I doubt whether this can ever be done In classes at whole- 
sale, because the rate of transition to directed mental 
activity varies so greatly In individuals. 

In an education that has for its problem the trans- 
formation from physical to directed mental activity the 



154 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

sublimation of the purely physical has to be neglected. 
That is what distinguishes the so-called cultural or aca- 
demic from vocational education, which has for Its aim 
the sublimation of the purely physical activity, and from 
technical education, which aims at a directed mental 
activity having for its object the Improvement in meth- 
ods and productiveness of the physical activity. ^ 

The great fallacy which has dominated the thinking ^^ 
of all men for so many centuries is that the submission _ ^ 
of the purely physical Is of a lesser value than that of^^ 
the purely mental. There is no proof that It Is. One 
might find very good arguments to prove quite the con- 
trary. Man has a physical nature which the purely men- 
tal tends to repress, making the body a damaged article 
through neglect. A proper proportion of the mental and 
physical makes for a longer, happier and more useful 
life. But society has for centuries more richly rewarded 
the mental than the physical worker, indicating that this 
Is the line in which social evolution Is progressing. So 
possibly It Is Inevitable that a higher value must always 
be set on directed thinking than on directed doing, 
though it seems to me that the value really should be 
different and not higher, for If all eventually should at- 
tain this end of sublimated, directed mental activity, the 
physical medium with which life is carried on would 
sensibly deteriorate and with It the mentality. The sup- 
position that one kind of activity is better or higher than 
another Is, then, a fallacy. Having a mind Inseparably 
during life connected with a body, we have no right to 
develop the one at the expense of the other. We shall 
eventually, then, have to be able to tell a person when he 
is young whether he belongs in the class which is capable 



DIFFUSE DISPLACEMENT 155 

of having his physical energy transformed into mental 
energy or not. If he is not, we shall have to learn how 
to persuade him not to try to sublimate the wrong kind of 
energy. Fortunately a goodly number of young persons 
realize at some time during their schooling that they can 
more readily sublimate their physical than their mental 
activities, and relieve themselves and their teachers of 
the unpleasant duty of telling them so. But there are 
many yet remaining in the academic institutions whose 
time is woefully wasted in fruitless attempt to transform 
their physical energy into mental energy, an attempt 
which is worse than fruitless in one sense because the dis- 
couragement which they experience in trying to do what 
is impossible for them diffuses itself over their whole 
life. 

Diffuse Displacement 

A form of displacement called diffuse displacement 
does indeed occur very commonly in normal life and 
quite as commonly in the schoolroom. It is the tendency 
to find fault with everything. The cause of it is a' 
defect in the fault-finder. This depends upon the prin- 
ciple (page 158) that it is impossible to see in the ex- 
ternal world what does not already exist in the mind. 
An infant playing on the edge of a parapet over which a 
fall would be fatal does not see the danger. The ability 
to see the danger is entirely a matter of mental de- 
velopment. The person long experienced in automobile 
driving does not " see danger " in this form of locomo- 
tion as does one who has never driven in a motor car. 
He may have seen danger in the days when he was learn- 
ing to drive, but he has, if not neurotic, developed be- 



156 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

yond the seeing of danger In this activity. What he sees, 
as is well known, is a great many things which his in- 
experienced passenger could not see in the short time 
they are visible. He sees, in other words, things he has 
formerly seen and in a sense never anything absolutely 
new. 

This principle applies with peculiar aptness to one's 
inability to criticize anything in another person, without 
having In his own conscious or unconscious mental life 
the same defect as that criticized. This principle, too, 
if fully realized by all people, would finally cut out all 
censorious criticism from the social relations of all peo- 
ple. If we fully believed and clearly saw that we could 
never find a fault In another which we didn't have in our- 
selves, we would then keenly appreciate the fact that 
every time we found fault with anyone we were advertis- 
ing the existence of that in ourselves too. 

While there are doubtless many apparent exceptions 
to this principle, I think it is undoubtedly true In the 
broad aspects of human character. The boy who goes 
around with a chip on his shoulder is generally pretty 
sure of a fight. Any person who Is " looking for trou- 
ble " frequently, to say the least, finds it. It Illustrates 
the form of displacement which Is technically known as 
the " projection of a reproach." A person has an un- 
conscious feeling of guilt. Unconsciously he feels that 
he is a coward. Displacing this feeling (a displacement 
which occurs in the unconscious) to others, he acts toward 
them as if they were cowards — acts, in other words, as 
if he were a bully himself. Thus it is when a bully is 
really tested by a fearless opponent his essential sense 
of inferiority is manifested and he runs. The aggres- 



DIFFUSE DISPLACEMENT 157 

sive acts of the bully are really an over-compensation 
for his unconscious feeling of inferiority. Of course he 
is unaware of his true inferiority. He sincerely and 
firmly believes, for the greater part of the time, that he 
is physically superior. The same thing, too, applies 
to the intellectual bully. His sense of inferiority is 
only unconscious. It may then be asked, what is the im- 
portance of another person's knowing this, if the physical 
or mental bully is himself deceived about his own es- 
sential inferiority. It certainly will not influence him to 
be told that he is at heart a coward. He has probably 
been told that many times already. I offer it, however, 
as another example of the conscious mind being occupied 
by or seized by a certain kind of thought like the persons 
(the sadistic characters mentioned on page 142) whose 
thoughts are mostly of cruelty. The bully is one who 
thinks too much about physical prowess. The mechan- 
ism is that his essential inferiority, of which he has been 
of course absolutely unaware, has caused him, though he 
did not know why, to think about physical superiority. 
The bully may be made originally in childhood by a 
beating at the hand of an older and stronger person. 
From that time on, and particularly if his mind has had 
no chance of ingesting other ideas on account of the 
exigencies of his environment, he thinks of personal en- 
counters in which of course he always fancies himself 
the victor. 

Just as the bully will criticize his coevals for their 
alleged cowardice until they become tired about hearing 
about such a topic and squelch him, so any person, if he 
be naive enough to find fault with any others, will criti- 
cize them only for the faults which he has himself. And 



158 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

yet he is not conscious of having those faults himself. 
The only way he becomes conscious of the faults is when 
he attributes them to other people. But in attributing 
them to other people he is, of course, explicitly declaring 
those faults to be the other people's and not his own. 
The very necessity of attributing them to other people 
is an effort to get rid of, to foist upon others, what is 
really his own. He thus expresses his desire to be free 
from those defects. That is his way of freeing himself 
^ from those faults — by shoving them off onto other 
people. 

Here we see how purely a matter of wishing it is, 
how the act of criticizing or fault-finding is the conscious 
expression of the unconscious desire to have the virtues 
which are the opposites of those vices which are blamed 
in others. Thus only can we become conscious of our 
own faults — when we find that we have attributed them 
to others. So that when Brown says, '' Smith is an ill- 
tempered man," he should add, '' which shows that I 
am ill-tempered in noting it in him." If Owen More 
says: " Old Gotrox is a detestable miser," he should add, 
in order to tell the whole truth, " but my remark shows 
that I am stingy myself, or I should never have thought 
it of him." If Mrs. McCray Fish says, " That Miss 
Arma Dillo has a perfectly horrid nature," she must, In 
order to include all that accusation implies, continue, 
*' but, of course, I suppose I'm a mean thing myself to be 
saying so.'* 

If we are sufficiently well read in human nature to In- 
terpret the manifold displacement mechanisms of the 
mind, we shall now clearly see that almost all statements 
about human nature Involve displacements of one kind 



DIFFUSE DISPLACEMENT 159 

or another. And In the sphere of human mental qual- 
ities we cannot, without realizing the universality of this 
mechanism, get the full sense of the statement that al- 
most nothing that a man, woman or child can say about 
their own or their neighbours' characters, mental or 
spiritual, can possibly be the truth. In matters of pure 
human nature nobody naturally tells the truth. They 
think they want to, but they are completely turned about 
by their own unconscious wishes. Whatever one says 
is almost sure to be quite the opposite of the truth. We 
can tell the concrete facts, such as the time of day or 
the measures of things, although scientists will there re- 
mind us that the constant error and the personal equa- 
tion are inevitable in all judgments of quality. 

In the schoolroom we find the displacements rampant 
and uncorrected both in teacher and in pupil. The 
teacher, if disposed to be critical, judges according to the 
social standard with which she is herself familiar. She 
notices in pupils only the deportment which she is trained 
in, qualified to examine and report upon. Of course she 
sees only the fine qualities she herself has. But hav- 
ing them, there is no unconscious urge to transfer or 
displace them to others, and so praising others is not in- 
stinctively strained after by the unconscious. Only the 
Omnipotent can see that everything is good. The parti- 
potent can see only the fragments of the goodness of the 
earth or the inhabitants thereof. The beauty is in the 
eye of the beholder in a very literal sense. 

The most deficient classes in school are those whose 
members are always looking out for unfairness, par- 
tiality, dishonesty and misbehaviour on the part of the 
other members of the class. The displacements are 



i6o THE CHILD'S UNCONSaOUS MIND 

legion. Their minds are more occupied with moral than 
with Intellectual questions, because they are themseleves 
more Immoral than the classes whose minds are more 
occupied with the subject-matter of their lessons. True 
occupledness with their lessons crowds out questions of 
deportment or dishonesty, and no accusations are made. 
On the other hand, the teacher that Is a martinet in dis- 
cipline shifts the mental activity from the intellectual to 
the moral question, much to the detriment of the school 
work. True work truly accomplished Is honesty it- 
self. 

If the relations between teacher and pupil could be in- 
tellectual relations only. If the minds of both parties 
could be entirely occupied with the subject-matter of 
the course of study during the time supposed to be de- 
voted to it, the displacements would be avoided. These 
displacements are, however, universal unconscious men- 
tal mechanisms, and themselves partly constitute the real 
cause why an absolutely unified relation cannot exist be- 
tween the pupil and the work. There are many other 
determinants, one of which is mentioned (page 194) 
as the unconscious wish to do something of real present 
value, and the knowledge, partly conscious but progres- 
sively more and more repressed, that the activities of the 
school work are of no real present value. If ever they 
ask what Is the use of studying this and that, the children 
are told that it trains their minds and that a well-trained 
mind will be at some time in the future a great advan- 
tage to them, and they will be much better able to gain 
at that future time what they will want at that future 
time. But, to the unconscious, present wants alone have 
dynamic force to cause action. The unconscious is 



DIFFUSE DISPLACEMENT i6i 

unorlented toward time or reality. It knows no future, 
and it only wishes, and in terms of the present. 

So that from one point of view we are in present 
education attempting to substitute a future want for a 
present want, a sort of displacement designed to drive 
out the other natural and unconscious displacements so 
characteristic of all human undirected thinking or phan- 
tasying (wishing expressed in mental images). This 
may be considered analogous to the self-denial which, 
according to the principles of political economy, we sup- 
pose to be necessary for a man to exercise in order to 
create capital. He denies himself a present small grati- 
fication, saving a penny now in order to have a pound 
later. 

This is a very difficult thing to do, because it is abso- 
lutely contrary to the trends of the unconscious wish, 
which always presses for present gratification. As we 
have seen, one of the commonest forms of displacement 
is an unconscious replacement of one idea containing the 
external form of a wish by another idea which is some- 
what similar to it. The form of the original wish, for 
instance the desire to be cruel, is contrary to the require- 
ments of society, while the substituted wish form, for 
instance the desire to perform surgical operations, is in 
conformation with the requirements of society. 

The displacement is the acceptance of the one wish 
for the other and the ignorance that in the second wish 
form the original wish is to a certain extent satisfied. 
It is much as if the person had a strong desire to push or 
to pull, and that desire could be turned to good advan- 
tage by getting him to push a hand-cart or to pull a 
wagon. The unconscious, while always In a state exactly 



1 62 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

analogous to a supposed person wanting merely to pull 
and not wanting to pull any particular thing, is never 
unaccompanied by consciousness in some form, which 
always gives a definite shape to the desire to pull. The 
wish has a form given to it by the physical constitution 
oi the individual who is the stage whereon the wishes 
appear. If an Individual is endowed with a strong 
physique, he will desire to use it, to use all his muscles 
and send things flying. If he has a big voice, he will 
want to use it; if he has an eye sensitive to shades of 
colour, he will want to work in colour in some way. 
Also his mental experiences will give form to his wishes, 
as we very familiarly see when a child has a new experi- 
ence and wishes immediately to repeat it. If by his 
parents this new experience is considered good. I.e. 
advantageous to society as they understand it, the wish 
to repeat it will be gratified; but if considered dis- 
advantageous, an immediate substitution or displace- 
ment is consciously made by the parents. A baby wants 
to suck its thumb, and either a pacifier is given to it, or 
a pair of spherical metal gauntlets is put on its hands. 
The pacifier satisfies its desire to suck and saves the 
thumb from being deformed but not the mouth. The 
gauntlets are interesting in quite another manner, and 
so satisfy a craving, but not the original one. The form 
of the first craving is displaced by that of the second, 
though in a sense it may be said that the craving is 
essentially the same In either case. The Indirection is 
a mark of the substitution. The baby does not know 
or does not appear to know the difference. 

We are all in the baby's position in all of the uncon- 
scious substitutes made for our gratification by society 



RATIONALIZATION 1 63 

and environment. We do not know the difference. We 
are satisfying our primordial craving every moment * 
(yes, even in vehemently expressing our dissatisfaction), 
though we do not know that it is the unconscious wish 
that we are satisfying and not the conscious desire which 
alone we think we are satisfying. 

Exactly the same thing is going on in every school- 
room every minute. Not only the unconscious displace- 
ments, about which the pupil knows nothing and which 
are supplied by the environment, but the consciously 
intended displacements which the teacher is constantly 
endeavouring to make, and which are unconsciously 
resisted by the pupil. 

Rationalization 

A man who smoked more tobacco than he thought he 
ought to began to cut down on his cigars on account 
of expense. He preferred cigars to tobacco in any other 
form, but smoked a pipe for economy, getting, however, 
a certain amount of real pleasure from it. Though still 
ponging for cigars, which he used to buy by the box, and 
of the ten-cent quality, he persistently, after his resolu- 
tion, refrained from buying a box of them, knowing that 
he would smoke six a day, a waste of money which he 
could ill afford. He would buy two ten-cent cigars on 
his way home and smoke one after dinner, keeping the 
next for next day's dinner. Then he would see 
this cigar after breakfast the next morning, and would 
smoke it. Thereafter he would buy only one ten-cent 

* I shall have a great deal more to say about the continual satisfaction 
of unconscious wishes on pages 167 and 257. 



1 64 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

cigar. Later he felt so virtuous about this economy 
that he thought if he denied himself two cigars a day 
he might as well have a moderately good one (this was 
before the war), and would buy a fifteen-cent cigar. 
Occasionally thereafter he would omit a day for some 
reason, either that he did not happen to pass the usual 
cigar store or that he was in a hurry and did not want 
to take time. 

Once he was met at the train by his daughter, who 
walked home with him. They had an errand on the 
opposite side of the street from the cigar store. As they 
started to cross, she said to him: "Aren't you going 
to get your cigar?" He took this as an excuse, as he 
did everything that came along and bought one at 
another store they passed, but compromised with him- 
self and bought a ten-cent cigar instead of a fifteen-cent 
one. The next day when he was trying to pass the cigar 
store the thought came to him: "You had only a poor 
cigar last night. You might get a fifteen-cent one now, 
to make up for it." 

He had occasional headaches which his conscience 
suggested to him came from too much smoking. But 
he also had a slight indigestion now and then, and his 
desire for cigars suggested that the headaches might 
just as well come from the indigestion and have nothing 
to do with tobacco, and so then he would buy and smoke 
a cigar. It then came into his mind that if there was any 
doubt about it, he could prove it by quitting smoking for 
a time, and see if he had any headaches. The idea that 
the tobacco might also cause the indigestion never 
occurred to him. 

Finally he became disgusted with the reasons which he 



RATIONALIZATION 1 6 s 

was habitually giving to himself for smoking, and saw 
that any reason whatever was reason enough to induce 
him to smoke, and that as a matter of fact one reason 
was just as good as another. His reasons in other 
words were really as rational as those giving excuses 
to the drinker for imbibing, in the following old dog- 
gerel: 

// all he true that I do think, 

There are five reasons we should drink: 

Good wine, a friend, or being dry, 

Or lest we may be by and by. 

Or any other reason why. 

The motive force of the reason is therefore dependent 
not on the reason itself, but on the desire to drink, or, 
in the case of the man above referred to, the desire to 
smoke cigars. In other words, the so-called reason, 
which should in reality be a cogent reason, or one com- 
pelling the man to do something, was in this case merely 
the act that released a great force of desire into external 
realization. Any fact, whether relevant or not, was 
used as an excuse. " Any other reason why " would do 
as well as the legitimate reason for smoking a cigar, if 
there was any legitimate reason. 
I One might safely make a general statement that any- 
\ thing will satisfy us as a reason to justify us in doing any- 
I thing we want to do. There are two factors in this 
situation, both of which should be mentioned: first that 
there is no difference in the quality of reasons accepted 
by people for doing what they want to do, and second 
that they universally feel this need of justifying an action 
which at the same time they feel to be unwise. We are 



1 66 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

all giving ourselves or other people reasons which we 
offer In defence of our actions (and of course we think 
some at least of them need defence) because we feel that 
;we need to give reasons for our actions. This practically 
universal tendency to justify our actions, or our thoughts 
on verbal principles, Is known as rationalization. 

The rationalizations of the cigar smoker above men- 
tioned were conscious ones. He knew that In a sense 
he was fooling himself all the time. But the majority of 
rationalizations are. In the case of most people, entirely 
unconscious. People do not know that the reasons they 
give for a statement or an opinion or an action are dic- 
tated to them by their own unconscious, and that their 
apparent cogency is attributable solely to their congru- 
ence with the desires of the people giving them as 
reasons. If we realize the fact that most reasons are 
mere rationalizations, we shall soon clearly see that in 
nine cases out of ten the reasons assigned by persons 
for doing anything are not the real causes why they do 
those things, but are Indirect expressions of the uncon- 
scious wish. It Is quite enlightening to realize that if 
you are unacquainted with your own unconscious, not 
a single reason you can possibly assign for anything 
you think, say or do Is the real cause of your thinking, 
saying or doing It. The real cause Is the unconscious 
wish of which you cannot possibly, without a thorough 
study of your own unconscious, be aware In the least 
degree. Only after a thorough analysis by an expert ana- 
lyst can you trace any of your actions to their true cause. 

This gives a clear expose of the absolute futility of 
asking a child why he did such and such a thing — for 
instance, committed some form of disorder. He does 



RATIONALIZATION 1 67 

not know and could not tell if he tried. Some will 
simply sit or stand mute, looking on the floor. Others 
will fabricate more or less glib excuses which are, to 
the teacher, quite manifestly mere excuses, while those 
who are less sophisticated will feel miserable because 
they think the teacher wants them to say something and 
they cannot do so. Why they did not study their lessons, 
why they made this or that mistake, etc., all are quite 
as much unknown to them as are the real causes of his 
action to the habitual rationalizer. 

From this human tendency to rationalize every one 
of their acts emerges the fact that all people do what 
they want to and subsequently seek to align their actions 
with the principles of social living by assigning reasons 
for doing what they want to do. 

And from this it appears that whatever people are 
doing is what they want to do. This is the fact which 
is hardest to believe of all the facts recently discovered 
about the human soul. If it is true that all wishes are 
gratified in one of two ways, either consciously or uncon- 
sciously (page 257), it is also true that whatever people 
are doing all the time is fulfilling their wishes. It seems 
quite an outrage on common sense to suppose that a poor 
man is poor because he wants to be poor, or that a sick 
man is sick because he wants to be sick, or that an 
unfortunate wants to be unfortunate; but it is the literal 
truth. Only we must remember that in being poor, sick 
or unfortunate it is frequently only the unconscious wish 
that is being fulfilled, and there are different degrees of 
unconsciousness in wishes. 

If the particular man is utterly unaware of any pos- 
sible advantage that could come to him from his being 



1 68 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

sick, his wish which is being fulfilled is totally uncon- 
scious. If the particular person who is poor cannot 
possibly imagine any advantages in being poor, his wish 
to be poor is only an unconscious one. But there are 
many poor men who have found compensations or who 
have said that they found compensations in poverty; 
and, as for the unfortunate, why, " Sweet are the uses 
of adversity," words from a speech which is a beauti- 
ful example of rationalization, for in that soliloquy the 
duke is merely justifying his own inactivity and his sub- 
missiveness to the stronger will of his brother. 

It has been proved that many accidents resulting in 
injury have been in reality merely the fulfilment of 
unconscious wishes of the person injured, if he was the 
cause of the accident, or of the causer of the accident, 
if the person who was injured was in any way inimical 
to him. The fact is recognized in law in the term 
" criminal negligence." It might almost be said that 
every catastrophe except some cases of death by lightning 
is the expression of some unconscious wish of some 
person or group of persons. I groan under the present 
conditions of the high cost of living, and I know full well 
that I am not doing a thing to prevent it, and that I 
must wish it, at any rate unconsciously, more than a lov/ 
cost, or at any rate I and all the others who similarly 
groan are desiring other things which we devote our 
energies to getting, more than we would the getting of 
the low cost, or we would all unite and get it. 

The axiom that what we are getting is the actual ful- 
filment of our conscious or unconscious wishes is of 
extreme interest in that other but immured little world 
of the schoolroom. 



RATIONALIZATION 1 69 

What the pupils are doing is what they wish to do in 
spite of all external control, suggestive or dogmatic. 
And at the same time they are being trained in rationali- 
zation. Those who are naive enough to give expression 
to every wish which emerges into their consciousness are 
at once reprimanded and the unconscious wish, instead of 
becoming conscious in its original form, is displaced to 
some other form. Its unconscious nature is concealed 
and its unconscious form is no longer known. The 
unconscious wishes are banned as unspeakable, horrible. 
They must be put out of sight. They must be put in a 
place where we cannot know about them any longer, not 
even what they do to us without our knowledge. That 
attitude is about as sensible as turning our backs on a 
wild beast in a forest, so that we could put him out of 
sight and out of mind. 

Pupils in schools are trained in rationalization, for 
they are permitted to do what they wish, and no power 
can prevent them, and they are questioned and reasoned 
with and taught to give the wrong reasons for their acts. 
An unconscious wish can be fulfilled by an act which is 
composite in its nature, partly conscious and partly uncon- 
scious, the conscious element of it representing the 
compliance with the school situation and the unconscious 
element being there all the time and constituting the 
fulfilment of the unconscious wish. Thus a boy may be 
told to leave the room, and he leaves it, complying with 
the request, and apparently not fulfilling any unconscious 
wish, because he is being disgraced and placed in a 
situation of inferiority. But he makes faces and walks 
slowly to the door and slams it when he goes out, thus 



170 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

fulfilling his conscious desire to get even with the teacher, 
and his unconscious desire to exhibit. 

In a state of society there are no simple acts. All are 
composite. If there were only two people In the world, 
and they lived within each other's perception, nothing 
that one of them did would be without Its effect on him- 
self and on the other. In a schoolroom of forty pupils 
there may be i,6oo motives for a child's doing one thing 
or another, If by motive we imply causes both in the child 
and In the environment. 

When I said that what the pupils are doing Is what 
they wish to do, I mean of course what they uncon- 
sciously wish to do. Consciously they may very keenly 
wish to do something other than what they are doing, 
but in the condition of being baffled in their conscious 
wishes not to go to school, or not to learn that particular 
lesson, or even In their conscious wish to excel In the 
subject they are still studying, they are in a condition 
where the unconscious wishes are much more likely to 
be expressed (in a disguised form, of course). When 
anyone is baffled, all the Inceptive movements, which 
in the successful activity here obstructed are necessarily 
retained within the organism, struggle to Issue into 
the external world In forms, popularly described as 
fidgeting, fussing or uneasy motions, forms of motion 
which are nothing but a more direct expression of the 
unconscious wish than would be the case If the attempted 
action which Is being obstructed had not been begun. In 
a sense fidgeting Is a more unconscious action than a 
great many others. We do not foresee each motion as 
we do when we are doing something according to a plan, 
and we sometimes do not know what we are doing at the 



SUMMARY 171 

very time when we are doing It. When we are doing 
something according to a plan we have an additional 
means of remembering It other than ordinary retentlve- 
ness; and after fidgeting awhile we can rarely remember 
what we have done. Thus the uneasiness of children In 
a schoolroom is a direct manifestation of the unconscious 
wish. 

Sum'ma7'y 

In this chapter we have seen that identifica\ti\o^, ^fL 
fundamental mechanism based on similarity, Is further 
differentiated Into projection and introjection, and that 
both of these are entirely unconscious; we have seen that 
compensation Is a conscious tendency balancing an uncon- 
scious one, that this compensation Is mediated through 
the displacement of ideas, and that rationalization Is an 
ingrained habit of humanity to give, after an action, a 
reason for it which Is never the true cause of the action. 
To the concept of libido as a creative wish is added the 
consideration that It may be sublimated or devoted to 
aims essentially non-sexual but productive. All these 
mechanisms are as clearly in evidence in the schoolroom 
as anywhere else, and it is a very great advantage for 
the teacher to become aware of them. 



/^ 



CHAPTER VI 

THE AIM OF education- 
After twenty years of teaching in a secondary school 
I am convinced that the modes of thinking on the part of 
many children are irremediably (without the teacher's 
knowing of the effects of the unconscious) twisted, and 
that they are so by virtue of their numerous complexes. 
I have seen class after class of bright-looking children, 
both girls and boys, develop utterly unnecessary and 
retarding resistances against not only my own but other 
subjects. Repeatedly in the classroom I have developed 
the fact that the pupils perfectly well knew what was 
necessary in order to express themselves tersely and 
clearly. But I have found that the pupils are governed 
by an unconscious wish not to make a good showing in 
school, not to perform thoroughly and well the tasks set. 
There exists a deep-rooted unconscious desire to under- 
value the academic training and to exaggerate its 
difficulties, partly, no doubt, because of the parental point 
of view that the curriculum is too long or too compli- 
cated, and partly because of the unconscious resistance 
to authority of any kind — a resistance which is natural 
to all humans. 

But the main point to be emphasized in this chapter 
is the fact of the very early determination of these traits 
by the ill-advised (or, better, un-advised) actions of 
parents. Much has been written about the unfortunate 

172 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS 173 

results of neglecting adenoids, enlarged tonsils, defective 
teeth and eyes, but very little upon the purely mental 
aspect of the problem. 



v' Early Impressions 

And first of all it is not generally understood, either 
by parents or teachers, how supremely important are the 
impressions received by the boy or girl at the very incep- 
tion of mentality, that is, during the first years of life 
— from one to five years of age. 

The period of the child's life before it is old enough 
even to go to kindergarten is in all v/ays the most 
important in its life in the dominating effect it has on 
the major traits of character of later years. The child 
is impressed by everything, and particularly by the 
moods and manners of the personal environment, 
impressed in ways and to a degree hitherto unrecognized, 
impressed so forcibly that on the plastic material, 
through which the soul is expressed, an almost permanent 
matrix is imprinted the changes in which wrought by sub- 
sequent events are of well-nigh negligible value. 

The design of that matrix consists largely of affective 
material, or is really an affective pattern. It is as if the 
temperament was fixed at that early age, the tendency 
to be extraverted or introverted finally determined, the 
respect for authority created (or ever after lost), and 
in general the social or asocial nature of the individual's 
reactions to his human environment are moulded in the 
pre-school days in such a way that they automatically 
colour and modify all the individual's later acts. 

If the child has both parents who are sexually well 



174 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

mated, there results in the home atmosphere so Invig- 
orating an air of satisfaction and comfort and love 
that the child's own nature Is Inspired into being warm 
and sunny. If, on the other hand, the child has for par- 
ents a married couple between whom there is not a 
complete physical and spiritual union, there Is lacking 
for his own subsequent love-life an important, Indeed es- 
sential, element, a lack which Is perceived by the child at 
once, whether consciously or unconsciously. In this case 
the child lacks at least a part of one parent. Is, let us 
say, three-quarters parented (to make a verb out of a 
noun), or three-eighths parented. 

Now, the pattern for the subsequent love-life of the 
boy or girl Is Imprinted upon his soul by the uncon- 
scious perceptions of the child before the age of five, 
possibly three, and whether he sleeps In the same room 
with his parents or not, he will unconsciously perceive 
and unconsciously Interpret the symbolism of the actions 
of his parents In relation to each other. He will perceive 
how and in what tone of voice they address each other, 
and will know, unconsciously to be sure, whether there Is 
In that tone the full sonority of the persons whose love 
Is entirely and completely devoted to the love of the soul 
as well as body mate. Even If these perceptions 
are unconscious for years or forever, they will determine 
the adolescent's attitude toward persons of the opposite 
sex. 

Con^dence 

For It Is In these earliest years that sexual confidence 
IS developed or stunted, and It is accelerated or retarded 
solely by observation of the sexual confidence on the part 



CONFIDENCE 175 

of those by whom the child's earliest years are influenced. 
To take only one instance, the habit of looking squarely 
into the eyes of another is a sign of the greatest love 
significance. The eye is, above all other features of 
the face, the truest indication of love power. The eye 
that shifts from the gaze of another is the gaze of a child 
who, by the parents or their surrogates in its earliest 
years, has been shamed, punished, ridiculed, shocked or 
what not. The eye, on the other hand, which shifts 
toward the eye of another is the eye of a child which 
has been brought up in confidence, and has not met the 
blasting rebuffs which destroy the unity of love by taking 
from it one of its truest outlets. 

Thus one might characterize even adults as being the 
possessors of the approaching glance or the fleeing 
glance. The person with the coming eye looks fre- 
quently into the eyes of his companion. He does not 
look, as some do hastily, at them and as hastily avert 
his gaze. Nor of course does he stare, an act whose 
symbolism is quite different at different stages of spiritual 
development. The " baby stare " is an opening of, and 
direction of, the eyes largely for the purpose of being 
looked at. It has been recorded of a modern pugilist 
that his eyes by their fierceness frequently helped to quell 
his adversaries, and Caesar, in telling of the mutiny 
which almost occurred in his army when it was approach- 
ing the soldiers of Ariovistus, mentions the fact that his 
own men were disconcerted by the tales of the traders, 
who said that there were few who could stand up against 
the keen glance of the savages' eyes. 

In what way the child that is imperfectly parented will 
later register in his own love-life the rate or degree of 



176 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

his parentedness has been very clearly shown by numer- 
ous researches into the unconscious mentality of only 
children or favourite children. 



Influence of Parents 

To the pre-adolescent boy the father or father sur- 
rogate becomes the model of what all fathers should be 
and indeed are in the wish-content of his own uncon- 
cious, and upon his father's attitude toward the boy's 
mother depends largely his own later attitude toward 
his own wife. The fact that parents think their children 
do not observe and mentally comment upon their parents' 
actions leads the parents only too late to control them- 
selves in the presence of their children. Thus if there 
is any reason why the parents should repress any feeling 
they have for each other, such as momentary irritation 
or chronic hatred, they will not do so before an infant, 
and only begin to suspect an influence on the child when 
he begins to make remarks about the parents' actions 
or is noticeably troubled by them. 

To the pre-adolescent boy, again, the mother or 
mother surrogate is a model of all a mother should be, 
and is the indelible prototype of what he is unconsciously 
looking for in a woman when later he desires a mate of 
his own. Indeed, it may be said that the idea of taking 
a mate is not unconsciously (though it may be consciously 
by his friends, when it naturally meets with the resis- 
tance of the unwarmed unconscious) suggested to the 
young person until he or she meets the mother or father 
replica. It is to be remembered that the mother impres- 
sion on the unconscious is that of a young woman and not 



INFLUENCE OF PARENTS 177 

a woman of the age of the mother at the time when the 
youth is inspired to take a wife. 

It is this indelible, though unconscious, prototype, still 
existing in the bottom of his heart, which causes him to 
be attracted by some girls more than by others. If he 
finds a girl whose qualities perfectly fit this unconscious 
maternal matrix, which is forming all his preferences, 
he falls completely in love with her, and gives expression 
to this desire in ways which characterize the other 
mechanisms of his psychic-physical organism. 

This is but another way of saying a boy's first love Is 
his mother. It might be inferred from this that a boy's 
only love is his mother, but this would be true only in the 
sense that he loves his wife as he did his mother, or for 
the same qualities that he perceived in his mother. Here 
it should be noted, too, that this manner of sex grati- 
fication has nothing detrimental about it, unless, as is 
frequently the case, it involves the rejection of other 
qualities. Then the predominance of this maternal 
image is truly a misfortune. 

Similarly a girl's first love is her father. For to the 
pre-adolescent girl, not only is her mother the model 
of all that a mother should be (for whence is she to 
derive any other models?) but her father is the ideal 
of all that a father should be (at the early age of one 
to five v/hat other can she have?) and all her father's 
actions are unconsciously noted and recorded by her. 
And how can it be otherwise? Have we not later, even 
in adulthood, understood the significance of what we 
have seen earlier, and even forgotten? Does not the 
significance of a present fact depend upon and come. If 
not wholly, at least partly, from the unconscious content 



178 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

of the mind which perceives the fact? Therefore to the 
girl baby whose father whines or scolds at her mother, 
that type of action, if repeated at any later time by her 
husband, will arouse in her the same resentment which 
she felt, and felt her mother feel, when she was a baby. 

If she had a father who was cheerful and unruffled, 
and later finds in her husband a temper uncheerful and 
irritable, she will not feel toward him the same resent- 
ment, because resentment is not a pait of her nature. It 
was not aroused in her infancy by the resentment of a 
woman expressed against an unreasonable man. In the 
place of resentment there may occur surprise and an 
immediate determination to learn and remove the cause, 
neither of which would occur to the adult trained as a 
child in the expressions of ill-feeling. The one child is 
by its environment habituated at the age of one to five 
years to respond to a situation in a complaining or de- 
structive way. To the other child that way does not 
occur, but only the constructive way. 

And if, furthermore, her father was in her infancy a 
jolly, unruffled, positive, creative man, she will not regard 
as men others who have not some approach to these 
qualities. Unless they strike that chord of robust and 
cheerful manliness which was strung and struck in the 
days when she first began to see and hear, she will not 
notice the man as being worthy of her attention. 

As for the young woman, so for the young man, the 
very quality which makes a member of the other sex 
stand out as being different from other men and women, 
making other men and women all alike, is that quality 
or group of qualities which distinguished the father or 
mother and made them so exceedingly superior to other 



INFLUENCE OF PARENTS 179 

persons In the infancy of the young woman or man in 
question. 

And just as the girl's mother Is her norm of mother- 
hood, she will expect to behave to her own husband and 
to her own children, not only consciously expect and 
plan, but unconsciously will behave In such a way that the 
mode of her own behaviour is consistently and com- 
pletely determined by the mode which has been stamped 
on her Infant soul by the silent, unnoted and unremem- 
bered, though none the less potent, observation. 

All this has been mentioned with the purpose of try- ^ 
ing to make parents and educators realize In a concrete 
way the plasticity, the consummate retentiveness and the 
essential permanence of the Infant mentality. At Its 
most plastic age It takes the fortuitous Impressions of Its 
environment, takes them very deeply and retains them 
only slightly altered. If the mind of the child were 
inanimate plaster, It would do the same thing, but being 
animate plasma it does it more effectively. 

So the old maxim. Maxima PUERIS reverentia dehetur, 
is to be extended to include children of the youngest 
age. For the parent It may seem almost ludicrous that 
he or she, with all their weaknesses, is to be regarded 
as occupying with respect to the child the position of 
a god, who having not merely procreated Its body must 
now for at least five years keep up a continuous crea- 
tion of its mind and soul. It Is ludicrous if not appall- 
ing that so much power for good or 111 Is placed in the 
hands and in the very manners, actions, voice, eye glance 
and hand habit of the parents and immediate human 
surroundings of the child. In fine, there Is absolutely 
no circumstance from birth until five or six years of 



i8o THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

age which can take place within the mental purview 
of the child which may not have the effect of turning him 
or her In a direction much desired or equally undeslred 
by the parents. 

But lest it may appear to some parents that their con- 
duct, in the presence of the child whose soul they are 
engaged in training after having evoked Its body, must 
be punctiliously regulated according to any given set of 
rules, It should be emphasized that any kind of conduct, 
even If it be rough, Is wholesome enough If It be animated 
by the proper feelings of love on the part of the parents 
and other members of the family — love not merely for 
one person but for as many as possible. Love will dic- 
tate the natural and wholesome response to the various 
situations. 

It is the more evident that the love of the parents for 
each other holds a determining power over the destiny 
of their children when the more modern psychology 
informs us that, if perfectly mated, a couple have no 
fears, phobias nor anxieties of a disease-producing kind, 
and when we reflect that a nervous constitution on the 
part of one or both parents, showing Itself In fears or 
anxieties, will have the deleterious effect of giving, so 
to speak, a timorous or phobic form to the child's mind. 
A fear of thunderstorms, observed in a child of a woman 
also afraid of celestial pyrotechnics. Is sometimes pop- 
ularly explained on the ground of its being " inherited.'* 
Much that is inherited by children is inherited not 
by heredity but through environment. If we inherit 
money, it is from a testator who is deceased. If we 
inherit traits of character, it may be from those of our 
ancestors who are alive as well, but truly inherited traits 



CREATION OF MIND i8i 

in this sense will be inherited by us before we are born 
and not after. On the other hand, the traits which, by 
a figure of speech, we may call inherited from our par- 
ents after we are born are the most constructive or de- 
structive inheritances which the child can have. 

And it should be recalled by all parents that the actual 
nervous constitution, which is determined for the child 
before the hour of birth, is the inheritance of an infinite 
number of ancestors, all of whom contribute an approxi- 
mately equal part. No praise or blame can be attached 
to the parents for any mental trait the child is possessed 
of at birth. His body and his nervous constitution are 
the inevitable effect of causes operating from the 
beginning of evolution.* But the child's body having 
been delivered, a responsibility at once rests upon the 
parents of producing, as far as in them lies, a whole- 
some mental spiritual environment which is to create the 
mind of the child. 

Creation of Mind 

The mind of the newborn infant is less in evidence 
than that of the day-old chick. It seems as if nature, 
in the case of humans, had intended to use, as a means of 
producing in them a conscious rational mentality, a 
period of utter helplessness, in which the actions upon 
the outside world should be of absolutely no effect, or 
of no significant effect, and the human chick, instead of 
beginning to peck and scratch, should be held by the 

* Only the most modern of obstetricians introduce into this matter any 
question of praise or blame, when they advise, for an expectant mother, 
a diet which is designed to make the unborn smaller than it would have 
been had the mother's nutritional instincts been followed. 



1 82 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

force of Its own weight In a position In which It should 
be, more than all other animals, assailed by, and prac- 
tically at the mercy of, outside Influences, which may 
greatly alter Its always variable efficiency. 

All young animals except the highest mammalia begin 
to shift for themselves comparatively soon. The Inac- 
tivity and receptivity of the human Infant make it more 
subject than any other animal to the Influence of the 
group and less to that of the heredity, i.e. innate con- 
stitution. If we should call the Innately inherited 
qualities " vertical " influences, because they come down 
from generation to generation, we might call the Influ- 
ences which are exerted by the environment " horizontal " 
influences. Then we should be able to express the whole 
matter very well by saying that with the " vertical '' 
Influences the parents have almost nothing at all to 
do, but with the " horizontal " influences they not only 
have a great deal to do, but they begin to have It as 
soon as the child Is born, they have to have it, whether 
they want it or not, and that their responsibility for 
their child's welfare is not only instantaneous but contin- 
uous and comprehensive, up to the time when it is no 
longer possible or desirable for the parents to be the 
sole environment of the child. Then other factors enter, 
which do not and ought not to belong to the parents. 
Then the child has to begin its relations with the com- 
munity and the state, in order that Its life shall not 
remain forever at the narrow calibre of the family. 

Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the good or 
evil effect exercised upon the whole subsequent lifetime 
of the child by the sunny or the " shady " character of 
the love influences with which it is surrounded in the 



CREATION OF MIND 183 

earliest days. The greatest obstacle to the development 
of a strong wholesome character Is the complex; and 
the emotion of fear which is the result of a feeling of 
inferiority is the greatest single factor in forming com- 
plexes. The wholesome and sunny temperament so 
productive of health, happiness and prosperity, which 
more than anything else annihilates wrong and misfor- 
tune, is not the result of a perfectly healthy body alone. 
It Is primarily the result of a point of view, an attitude, 
a disposition, an early fixed impression for which par- 
ents exist and for which they are responsible. Children 
who are physically perfectly healthy frequently lack this 
proper attitude towards the world, and sometimes even 
a crippled or blind child, thanks to loving care, 
has it. 

To the shady nature of the love influences emanating 
from the parents may be attributed their deleterious 
influences for the following reasons. The fundamental 
fear, that which produces a feeling of inferiority always 
avoided by the unconscious of every man, woman or 
child. Is a sexual fear, a fear either of impotence or 
sexual inferiority. I.e. unattractiveness. Due to our 
utterly senseless education, a great many perfectly 
normal persons know little of sexual norms and fancy 
they have violated some natural sexual law, and of course 
fear the consequences of that trespass. As their knowl- 
edge Is Indefinite and Inaccurate, they fear an Indefinite 
peril. And as the Indefinite always looks big, they 
exaggerate the supposed effects of their transgression 
sometimes to the degree of becoming despondent over 
thinking they have committed the " unpardonable sin." 

The sexual relations of most parents are such that 



1 84 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

they have been trained to shroud them In the blackest 
obscurity. Many a man has had his married life ruined 
by thinking that his mother was so pure that she could 
not have a passionate love for his father, and that no 
pure woman like her, as he picked out his wife to be, 
could be passionately attached to him. Therefore he has 
thought it out for himself, and quite logically deduced 
his erroneous conclusions from false premises, namely 
that, as for passionate love, he had either to give it up 
entirely or go to prostitutes for it, in whom there can be 
passion but not love. Many a woman too has been 
brought up under a training which taught her to believe 
that to feel any passionate love for any man, even her 
own husband, was wrong and sinful; therefore she re- 
pressed it all and took her husband's advances coldly with 
the Idea that if she responded warmly she would be to him 
as a prostitute and he would neither admire her nor 
treat her well, and she would be committing a great sin 
to love her husband passionately as (she imagines) the 
prostitutes do. And both parents, having this guilty 
feeling, he that he should not expect his wife to match 
him in ardour, and she in the unfortunate misapprehen- 
sion that only prostitutes can eat the true apple of love, 
have both suffered alike from their lack of sex education, 
and they pass this on to their children. 

The Child^s Sexual Curiosity 

The child's first conscious thought about Itself Is 
where It comes from. As both parents are ashamed of 
their marital relations, for no matter how hard the con- 
scious life tries to repress, the unconscious goes on the 



THE CHILD'S SEXUAL CURIOSITY 185 

plan of " all or nothing," and each parent, when con- 
fronted by the sweet innocence of a child just beginning 
to think, shrinks from trying to impart any of the 
secrets of adult love to an infant who evidently cannot 
understand. 

Suppose a three-year-old child says, '^ Mommy, where'd 
I come from?"iit will take a particularly pure and whole- 
some mind and one free from fear and ignorance to 
reply, in a tone quite as bright and fresh as little Billie's, 
" You came out of me, honey." Then imagine the 
difficulty on the part of most mothers in carrying on 
their end of the following conversation: 

B. Where did I come out? 

M. A part of me opened and you came out head first. 

B. How could I do that 'thout hurtin' you? 

M. You didn't. It hurt very much. 

B. Does it hurt now? 

M. No, not a bit. 

B. Gee, I must have made a big hole! 

M. No, you were quite small, about as big as Mrs. 
Smith's baby over on the Boulevard. 

B. How big was I? Show me. 

M. You were about so long and so big around, about 
the size of sister's doll. 

B. How did I ever get in there? 

M. You grew in there from as big as the point of a 
pin. 

B. Mow could I breathe inside of you and eat, 'n' 
everthin' ? 

M. I did it for you. 

B. How long was I in there? 



1 86 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

M. Nine months; about as long a time as from last 
Christmas until now. 

B. Gee, what a long time! Say, Mommy, did you 
put me there or did I just grow like an apple? 

M. Everything like an apple or an animal grows 
from the melting together of two little seed like things 
called cells. One comes from the father, the other is 
in the mother. They are exactly alike and equal. 

Those who could carry their end of the conversation 
up to this point generally break down here. But this is 
as far as, or farther than, the very young child pursues 
this inquiry. In all probability the last question would 
not be asked, for it Is found that the amount of infor- 
mation given here is completely satisfactory for a long 
time. The important point Is, however, that the child 
should be given as much information as he asks for, but 
no more. In the beginning the child has the utmost 
confidence In the parents, from whom he receives all 
physical comforts and necessities. His absolute faith 
makes him very jealous of anything that looks like a 
lack of confidence on the part of the parent. He is likely 
to resent any lack of sincerity on the parents' part In 
proportion as his confidence in them has been perfect. 
The least flaw spoils all for him, and particularly In mat- 
ters which he instinctively feels are most vital to him. 

I repeat that the parents' unwillingness frankly to 
state to their children the truth about their sexual origin 
Is caused by the parents' own shame in feeling that in 
some way passionate love Is sinful and Is therefore to 
be kept concealed from children who can talk. Possibly 
It Is because the parents fear that the children will say 



EFFECTS OF MISINFORMATION 187 

something about it before strangers. But most likely 
it is from a feeling of reluctance to confess before the 
so-called innocence of youth what they themselves 
erroneously believe to be wrong. 

And I repeat also that much harm comes to children 
both from the parents' carelessness about their conduct 
in the presence of children before they can talk, and their 
mendacity after that time. Unsatisfied sexual curiosity 
leads the children, on the other hand, to invent all sorts 
of grotesque theories of conception and birth, and to 
listen to other children who are variously misinformed. 
Many of these birth and conception theories are found 
by medical psychologists as nuclei of various phobias 
and other forms of neurosis. The untruthful statements 
of parents when they either say they do not know or 
repeat the time-worn myth of babies being brought by 
the doctor, have the further result of destroying once 
and for all the confidence which the child has up to this 
time had In the reliability of his parents. As the de- 
struction of this confidence amounts to the destruction of 
every kind of confidence in themselves as well as in every 
other person or thing, it is of the utmost Importance 
for parents so to school themselves that they can keep 
their hold upon their children, at least a little beyond the 
time of their first sex Inquiry. The child, instead of 
being fully parented, Is thus in a sense spiritually 
orphaned, and at a very early age. 

The Efects of Misinformation 

The fundamental basis for a wholesome interest In all 
things which is the foundation of a sound education in 



i88 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

any line lies in the undoubting knowledge on every child's 
part as to how, when and where he himself originated. 
Lacking this he is likely to doubt all things and, not 
seeing clearly and straight these fundamental facts, he 
is prone to look at everything with an intellectual 
strabism. 

If a teacher does not receive the child well oriented 
in these basic truths It Is Impossible to prevent many 
children becoming indifferent or perverse in their attitude 
toward their school work. All the troublesome phenom- 
ena of adolescence would be mitigated if the secondary 
schools could receive children who had been straightened 
out on matters of sex, but this will be impossible until 
parents themselves have succeeded in looking at the 
matter with an " approaching " glance Instead of with 
the '' fleeing " one. 

Directed vs. Undirected Thinking 

The striking difference existing between the atmos- 
phere of a schoolroom where there are pupils of a higher 
grade and that where lower-grade pupils are confined, 
Is that the older pupils are quieter. They talk less and 
they move less. The younger the pupils the greater is 
the Instinctive Impulse to move some part of the body 
Including the vocal apparatus, all the time. It may be 
said that the foremost aim oT all education Is to trans- 
mute the young person's primal urge to keep moving 
physically into a craving to be active mentally. The 
first Is instinctive and the second has to be acquired at 
great pains. This aim of changing activities from phys- 
ical, which are natural, to the directed mental activities. 



DIRECTED VS. UNDIRECTED THINKING 189 

which are not natural, Implies that it is a desirable aim. 
Everything that man has done, he has done because he 
has wished or desired it. As a whole, mankind has 
considered desirable the transformation of energy from 
physical into mental. The basis of this desire is the 
greater mobility and versatility of mental over physical 
powers. Physical powers are exceedingly limited, 
limited in fact to the use of a comparatively few muscles, 
while mental powers are unHmited. It is as if a small 
amount of iron physical power could by the alchemy of 
education be transmuted into an enormous amount of 
golden mental power, and the feeling of superiority of 
the individual in whom this transmutation takes place is 
very gratifying to him, enabling ^him to overcome his 
fellows, and therein satisfying one of his fundamental 
cravings. 

The craving to be active mentally is instinctive only in 
that sphere of thinking which is called undirected think- 
ing or day-dreaming. That is a variety of mental activity 
which, however, is quite unconcerned with any positive 
effect upon external reality. A child or an adult will 
day-dream for hours, with no present and no future 
result, except that in a very small minority of cases an 
adult will dream constructively, will think out a plan of 
action or the plot of a story, and later the action will be 
carried out or the story will be written. Generally, how- 
ever, day-dreaming is the only actual fulfilment of the 
unconscious wishes which are the really instinctive men- 
tal activity. Its essential characteristic is its practical 
futility, and the gradual change which it produces on the 
day-dreamer, making him less and less interested in 
real life and more and more centred upon himself, his 



190 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

mental eye being turned in towards his own thoughts 
and away from real things. An excessive introversion 
of this kind is seen in the form of insanity known as 
dementia praecox. 

The motives for a change from the instinctive day- 
dreaming, which is natural, to what is apparently un- 
natural have to be kept clearly in view, or the whole 
educational procedure seems at once irrational. The 
main motive for the transfer from physical to mental 
activity, and from the undirected to a directed form of 
thinking, is really a better adjustment of the physical 
activity and not, as many have seemed to think, the 
reduction In amount or complete abolition of physical 
activity. We are primarily physical as well as mental, 
and the only real gain to civilization by means of mental 
improvement is an Improvement of the physical con- 
dition. 

The Physical Child 

Now, the physical condition of the child is not a 
thing apart from his mental condition; It is not a sepa- 
rate thing which can be specially trained quite without 
regard to the mental state. If that were so, children 
could be put into mechanical exercisers, and their nat- 
ural resistance would, in a reasonable time, produce a 
result of muscular physique which would delight the soul 
of the most materialistic trainer whose photographs of 
gnarly backs and lumpy arms one occasionally sees In 
shop windows and magazine advertisements. Extreme 
muscular strength is an attainable, but is not a desirable, 
aim. So a mild amount of mentahty is injected into the 
physical training in the schools in the shape of games, 



THE PHYSICAL CHILD 191 

dances, etc. And Into the English study there Is also in- 
jected a small amount of physical training In the shape 
of declamation and dramatics. 

But this Is practically all. Nor would It be possible to 
combine Latin and physical training or any other sub- 
ject called cultural with physical training in the modes 
in which they appear in the school curriculum. The 
combination of physical and mental In the cultural sub- 
jects is there nevertheless, but in a much more subtle 
and elusive state ; for the connection between the cultural 
subjects and the physical condition of the pupil is 
mediated solely by the unconscious, about which prac- 
tically nothing Is known by the average teacher. 

It is quite common for the interest which Is displayed 
by a child in a subject such as arithmetic to be the out- 
ward manifestation of a real though unconscious interest 
in the teacher. It would seem that this is not only pos- 
sible but probable In all cases even where, as it Is in some, 
the Interest In the teacher Is not consciously known. We 
do hear pupils say they like a study because they like the 
teacher of it. And we are all well acquainted with the 
pupils who cannot make head or tail out of a subject 
because the teacher Is inferior. It would seem that a 
personally attractive teacher could arouse enthusiasm in 
a student for any subject whatever, whether or not the 
teacher knew anything about it at all. 

The Unconscious Wish as a Tension 

The aspect of the unconscious which Influences the 
physical health of the pupil, as well as his mental health, 
is the unconscious wish. It has been shown by the newer 



192 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

psychology that the unconscious wish Is a tension which 
is expressed only through the muscles, not only the larger 
and more familiar ones but also the very small ones of 
which we are never conscious. These small ones contract 
and expand with the result of enlarging and diminishing 
the calibre of the passages In the body through which 
go air, food, blood and various other fluids, and there- 
fore govern the development of those parts of the phy- 
sical organism which are supplied by the various chemical 
products of food, air and water. 

These wishes or tensions or infinitesimal inceptive 
movements of the muscles are at once too small to enter 
our conscious life and yet so numerous and so powerful 
as to Influence it greatly, though In ways that appear to 
be extremely indirect. They are, in their gross effects, 
distantly comparable with the rising or falling of the 
tide in a river which lifts a vessel alongside of a wharf, 
imperceptible to the eye while the eye has the patience 
to keep looking, and yet causing a change which is notice- 
able from time to time as one observes the height of the 
vessel against the wharf. 

The wishes or tensions which exist unconsciously in 
the mind of every child when confronted with a school 
task of any nature whatsoever correspond, In this com- 
parison, to the limitless force of the uplift of the water 
on the hull of the vessel, and the conscious attitude of the 
child corresponds to the physical effort which a boy or 
a girl might exert to oppose or assist in the upward 
movement of the boat on a rising tide. The effect on 
the boat is virtually nothing, while the effect on the boy 
or girl is directly in proportion to the effort put 
forth. Very wise are they if they cease exerting them- 



UNCONSCIOUS WISH AS A TENSION 193 

selves as soon as they have stirred up a vigorous cir- 
culation. 

And yet, some of the tasks assigned in school work 
are, if taken too seriously — that is, literally, — as hope- 
less as a single child's attempt to lift a thousand-ton 
vessel, or push it down into the water. The tasks, 
hopeless as they are, continue to be set, however, by 
teachers and devisers of curricula, and the inevitable 
result follows. Is anything except mental gymnastics 
accomplished, even though a full-rigged ship is put in the 
place of a dumb-bell? It is much as if one encouraged 
a pupil to make believe he was lifting the heavier weight, 
and gaining much glony from the fancied accomplish- 
ment, just because it is enormous. Of course, If they 
really could lift such a weight, they would be wonders. 
But we know they cannot, and they know they cannot, 
and so we practise them in the art of deceiving them- 
selves and trying to deceive us. 

It is not a mere matter of qualitative uncongeniality. 
The intellectual feats necessary to accomplish the 
mentally impossible they would gladly, many of them, 
perform, just as feats, to show power, but they soon 
realize the Impossibility of doing them well, even when 
they pass examinations at 95% and 100%. What 
must be the real candid feeling of the graduate who has 
received above 90% on a paper in any subject? Not 
that the mark Is a mark applicable to the subject, but 
that It is applicable to the person, who is, in truth, most 
Inadequate to give a 90% account of the subject. 

What, then, would be the result of giving to the pupils 
in secondary schools, or to the students in colleges, tasks 
that are commensurate with their comparatively slight 



194 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

abilities? The pride of the adults who are superintend- 
ing the education of the adolescents would be severely- 
hurt. To please our own fancy, to tickle our own 
imaginations, we pretend that the young people can 
handle Shakespeare, or Vergil, or chemistry or history 
or philosophy. And they, in their turn, are brought up 
to practise the same deception on their children when 
they come along and have to be educated. 

Now, in all this hypocrisy the wishes for real accom- 
plishment, the tensions or inceptive movements in the 
direction of attaining ends really and not imaginatively 
attainable, are bound to be frustrated. The young would 
really like to do what they can to help along civilization 
and well-being of every kind. For the unconscious wish 
is always a wish for power and for life. And when the 
conscious mind of the person being educated in schools 
is faced with a task which, if taken literally, is impossible, 
only the child-power of the conscious life is really 
enlisted, and not the race-power of the unconscious. In 
all this fruitless struggle, the unconscious, which is com- 
parable to a different personality residing in the same 
body as the conscious personality. Is perfectly aware of 
the futility of the efforts which are being put forth by the 
consciousness, and does not share In them, for It must by 
nature strive for results which are the resolutions of the 
tensions making up its essence. 

The unconscious is one continued wish or tension or 
bundle of tensions. These tensions are relaxed or 
resolved naturally from time to time in the act of creat- 
ing or the act of eating. I use the word creating Instead 
of reproduction, for the reason that the two main forms 
of the desire perpetuation are the perpetuation of self, 



UNCONSCIOUS WISH AS A TENSION 195 

and, as a variety of self-perpetuation, that of the race. 
Now, the race-perpetuating instinct, like all instincts 
springing from it, is transmutable. It may be transmuted 
from one kind of creation to another. This transfor- 
mation of the creative instinct from physical reproduc- 
tion of species to production or creation of other things, 
which has always been spoken of as higher, is called by 
the aspiring name of sublimation. And it is really higher 
from the point of view of personal power and accom- 
plishment. For the difficulties overcome in accomplishing 
it, which measure the value of it as a conscious produc- 
tion, are much greater than in the reproduction of kind, 
in which one acts spontaneously, without resistance and 
without sense of personal achievement or with only an 
illusory one. What nature causes and completes is so 
separate from the Ego, that opposes and overcomes 
that nature in us, that our overcoming it seems much 
more our own doing than anything in which nature 
wholly concurs. Thus it is evident that the accomplish- 
ment most gratifying to the individual consciousness Is 
that which most overcomes, masters or controls the 
instinctive and unconscious tendencies. In yielding to 
and falling in with the Instincts, which are absolutely 
common and universal, we are not developing that 
power which most typifies our existence as individuals. 
In doing the most common things we are surrendering 
our separateness as individuals and sinking ourselves 
into a larger organism — the race. 



196 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Reproductive vs. Productive Creation 

The primal urge or generic expression of vitality 
which keeps alive the living things on earth shows itself 
in mankind as the driving force which prolongs the 
individual life and propagates the species. This purely 
propagative desire I will call desire for reproductive 
creation, and distinguish it from its more refined form 
which might be called productive creation. Whenever 
the craving to create, which is the fundamental one in all 
humanity, is raised by any circumstances whatever into 
an urge to create not the reduplication of the self in 
other individuals, offspring (which I call reproductive 
creation because it merely repeats units like those which 
already exist) , but to create something new in the world 
by the manipulation of real things already existent into 
a new production which never existed before, such as a 
house or a book or a picture, I would call this latter 
kind of creation productive. Education is aimed solely 
at productive creation, though it is unfortunately true 
that instinct alone is not enough properly to direct the 
other kind. Left undirected, reproductive creation is, 
in the majority of cases, the cause of much misery which 
education in the distant future will, I am sure, con- 
tribute much to remove from the world. 

Every idea which occurs to us is a manifestation of 
the unconscious wish for creation, whether it be that 
continued creation of self which is otherwise called self- 
preservation, or that intermittent creation of other 
personalities called reproduction. There is no idea that 
is not originally caused to come into consciousness by 
that primal urge. This seems a very extraordinary state- 



THOUGHTS OR ACTIONS 197 

ment when we apply it to the idle fancies or chance 
associations which occasionally come into our heads. 
Why, when I am writing these words, does a picture 
suddenly flash before my mental eye, a picture of a piece 
of road in Vermont over which I drove two summers 
ago? I do not know positively, and could not be sure 
unless I spent a great deal of time studying other idle 
and apparently chance and trivial associations which 
might occur to me during the three or four hours which 
I might devote to the investigation this evening. Why, 
when I am reading Sully's " Pessimism," do I get another 
mental picture, extremely vivid, of a convivial scene 
under the trees, with tables and a luncheon served on 
them and a group of people having a jolly time? I sur- 
mise in this case that the tenor of the pessimism book 
evoked in me an opposing wish to be optimistic, and that 
this wish took the form of a banquet in an orchard, a 
bright visualization, which was the only medium then 
available for the unconscious to express a wish which 
might be put in the words: " I wish I were feasting on 
real food instead of purely mental pabulum, on delicious 
viands instead of on dry philosophic bones, and with a 
company of jolly people instead of alone, in the open 
air at noon instead of in a stuffy room at midnight." 

Occurrence of Thoughts or Actions 

An exceedingly important fact to realize Is that every 
slightest thought coming into anyone's head is, so to 
speak, the visible form of the primal urge which has 
caused him to be here and alive today and has caused 
the existence of every living thing that has ever come 



/ 



198 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

into being. It seems to be exceedingly important both 
for his present and his future and important in its bearing 
upon education. 

In the first place its enormous importance in education 
lies in the fact that it clears up a great many doubtful 
points as to the applicability of different types of educa- 
tion, technical, cultural, etc., as to the actual methods of 
presentation to the pupil and as to the relation existing 
between pupil and teacher. It explains much more 
clearly the necessity for the teacher and the teacher's 
work, and accounts for much of the strained relation 
which exists between teacher and student. Not only 
every slightest and most trivial idea which occurs either 
to student or teacher, but every littlest act of either of 
them, is causally connected with their own unconscious 
wishes for creativeness. The string of intermediate 
causes between a disorderly pupil's unconscious desire 
to accomplish, in the world, work of a concrete effectual- 
ness and his disorderly conduct in breaking a piece of 
furniture, losing or destroying a book, or diverting the 
attention of the entire classroom to himself by means of 
some exhibitionistic act — the string of intermediate 
causes between the individual pupil's disorder and the 
cosmic order which actuates his unconscious desires, is 
sometimes very long and complicated. It is in every 
strand's length connected by his reasoning faculty with 
his relations to fellow-student and teacher — a causal 
connection which has never, I believe, been taken into 
consideration in planning any educational work, for the 
reason that never until the present time has it been 
recognized. 

Up to the present time the association of ideas "-as been 



THOUGHTS OR ACTIONS 199 

regarded as a chance affair, a purely accidental matter, 
for which no laws could be discovered. Similarly the 
restless actions, apparently aimless, the multitudinous 
blunders, omissions and mistakes committed in school or 
college work have up to date been regarded as accidents. 
But just as the word "accident" (coming from two 
Latin words meaning " a falling toward," of one body 
in the direction of another) from a modern scientific 
viewpoint implies an attraction exerted by the one body 
upon the other, so in modern psychology we must suppose 
the existence of a force determining the occurrence of an 
idea, of an idea to do a thing and just as much the 
existence of a force causing an action which Is not 
accompanied by an idea (a so-called automatic action) 
as so many actions are, both of adults and children. 

I say an action not accompanied by an idea. Of 
course I mean an action not accompanied by an idea of 
which we are conscious. The idea may nevertheless be 
In the unconscious, a notion which Is the newer psychol- 
ogy's contribution to the theory of education. And just 
as I have occasion to say elsewhere that every emotion 
is connected with an idea, so here I say that every act 
is connected with a thought, although that thought may 
or may not be in consciousness at the time. We rightly 
speak of thoughtless acts, if we mean that such acts are 
not, at manifestation, accompanied by the appropriate 
conscious thoughts. But on careful consideration it is 
quite evident that an action Is but the outward manifes- 
tation of a thought^ sometimes a thought which has 
crossed the threshold from the unconscious into con- 
sciousness, but often a thought which remains In the 
unconscious. The expression " thoughtless acts," then, 



200 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

fitly represents this condition, which is a very striking 
one, and seems at first sight very extraordinary if not 
impossible. But what is a thoughtless act if not an act 
which has been caused by a thought that does not exist 
in consciousness, to be sure, but does exist in the uncon- 
scious part of the personality of the thoughtless actor? 

Thoughtless Acts 

So we should be very careful to keep clear the true 
Implication of the thoughtless acts of children or adults. 
Very frequently both act thoughtlessly, but the thought- 
lessness Is only In the comparatively narrow sphere of 
consciousness. The thought Itself which gave form to 
the act yet lives, but It lives and moves and has its being 
In that illimitable world of the unconscious; the thought 
causing your thoughtless act lives In your unconscious, 
and the thought causing my thoughtless act lives 
In my unconscious, and so on for every person In the 
world. 

As soon as we have clearly seen this very definite fact 
of the rigid natural causation between thought and act, 
between conscious thought and conscious act, between 
conscious act and conscious thought, relations which have 
always been recognized, and between conscious act and 
unconscious thought, between unconscious act and uncon- 
scious thought and between unconscious thought and 
unconscious act, relations which are only now beginning 
to be recognized, we shall see also the connection between 
unconscious thought and those varieties of act which are 
partly conscious and partly unconscious. By this I mean 
errors, blunders, mistakes of all kinds, slips of the pen, 



ORGAN INFERIORITY COMPENSATED 201 

tongue, hand, foot, etc., none of which has hitherto 
had any significance for teacher or pupil, but which 
now are seen to have a very deep one. For it is a fact 
amply demonstrated that every error is the partly uncon- 
scious gratification of an unconscious wish, and as all 
unconscious wishes are wishes for one or the other kind 
of creativeness, it turns out paradoxically enough that 
the so-called accidental breaking of an object or the tear- 
ing of a page or the spoiling of a written exercise is the 
conscious manifestation of an unconscious wish to create 
and not to destroy. This fact puts a different aspect 
upon all the misdeameanours of children and makes 
understandable in a way never before appreciated the 
words : Forgive them, for they know not what they do. 

Organ Inferiority Naturally Compensated 

A defence of the present system of education is that it 
gives a well-rounded development, that the subjects 
which the student finds disagreeable or difficult are the 
very ones he most needs, inasmuch as his disinclination 
to follow them up is an indication that they are his weak 
points, and that if he should be allowed to neglect them 
he would be like a person refusing to exercise his weak 
arms and preferring to develop further his comparatively 
strong legs. It is also a fact, on the other hand, that an 
innate constitutional weakness in any part of the organ- 
ism tends to be compensated for, not merely by a 
greater strengthening of some other part, as when a blind 
man develops keener sense of touch than one who sees 
normally, but in many cases the constitutional weakness 
or inferiority of an organ, such as an eye, results in a 



202 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

more efficient use and greater development of the same 
organ, as when a person with low sensitivity to colour 
or form becomes, by this compensating mechanism, an 
artist, or one with a constitutional defect of hearing 
becomes a musician. That is to say, the unconscious, 
perceiving the defect of the organ in question, devotes 
a greater part of its power to the perfection of the 
functioning of the Inferior organ than the unconscious 
of a person in whom no such defect exists, and In whom 
of course that organ will remain forever unnoticed. 
Thus the classical Illustration of the difficulty of this 
nature triumphantly overcome is that of Demosthenes, 
who conquered an impediment in his speech with so great 
an Impetus that he became an orator. And In our own 
day there are numberless illustrations of the same, of 
which I might mention the case of Annette Kellerman, 
the great swimmer, who Is said to have been, as a child, 
delicate and unusually afraid of the water.* 

So that the argument that the natural bent of a person 
Is not the thing to be developed because it is his strong 
point, and the so-called faculties he shows no interest 
in developing are his weak points. Is really based on a 
misinterpretation of the facts. One Is most sensitive 
about his weak points and essentially what one takes the 
most interest In Is the element In his mental or physical 
make-up which Is the tenderest and most sensitive, so that 
/one's natural bent Is towards one's inferior faculty; and 
if education Is to do the best for the individual. It should 
help him develop his weak point, feeling assured that 
what he takes least interest In he has least to fear from. 

* If a rubber automobile tire tube is inflated, the thinner spots expand 
the most, the weaker parts are the ones to swell up to the greater size 
from the pressure of the air within. 



ORGAN INFERIORITY COMPENSATED 203 

It is evident that a perfectly functioning part attracts 
no attention. We never know we have a stomach until 
we have indigestion. We never know where our 
appendix vermiformis is (or was) until disorders in cer- 
tain locations call our conscious attention thither, and, 
in some cases, make the defects our strongest points. 
Similarly we, as a race, must have thought or felt that 
our mentality was our weak point judging from the 
hysterical efforts we have made to fortify that position 
by academic education. 

There is another consideration which comes in here. 
If Gerald or Gladys has a perfectly good mathematical 
head and can do twice as much as Betty or Bobby, they 
of course to a certain extent enjoy the prestige which this 
superiority gives them and will more or less take advan- 
tage of the opportunity for exhibitionism of a mild type 
which they have, but the prominence thus gained is made 
uncomfortable for them frequently by the remarks only 
quasi-admiring which their companions and relatives 
make about them at school and at home. In short, 
there is in every domestic and scholastic environment a 
mild tendency to look upon mathematical excellence, at 
least, as a sort of freakishness. The boy or girl who can 
work without effort the most exacting algebraic problems 
arouses in other pupils and even to a certain extent in 
the adults of the environment a certain degree of envy 
which is expressed in one of two ways, commonly. It 
is expressed as extravagant compliment, the insincerity 
of which is quite apparent to the victim of it, or it comes 
out as a statement that those who excel in mathematics 
generally do not excel in anything else. This, if repeated 
often enough to constitute a family tradition, has a very 



204 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

suggestive effect upon the child who suffers from such 
remarks. 

Then there is in a great many people, young and old, 
an unfortunate tendency to belittle the accomplishments 
in which they themselves excel and to overvalue the 
accomplishments of others. This has both a subjective 
and an objective cause. The objective cause is the very 
fact that misery loves company and that those who are 
inexpert in anything have many sympathizers. They have 
lots of good company. The subjective cause is found in 
the fact that a very great many young people have num- 
erous good but unconscious reasons for not wishing to 
excel in anything. Excellence brings responsibilities, as 
riches provoke appeals. One who can do anything super- 
latively well has many requests to perform, both for the 
profitless exhibition of his prowess and, as numberless 
people in all walks of life v^^ill testify, for the actual doing 
of favours from which the recipient is the only person to 
benefit. It is only recently that the doctrine of selling 
oneself to all people in a certain sense is being advocated 
as the best means of getting on. It is quite evident on 
careful consideration that this preparing of oneself to 
serve others and in so doing correctly evaluating one's 
own powers has no small part to play in the unconscious 
life, if it has not in the conscious life of even the very 
young school child. 

What are, then, the activities, mental and physical, 
which will enlist the unconscious wishes as well as the 
conscious ones, and enable the incipient motions to be 
carried out to an end which shall be the appropriate 
relaxation of the tension? For every tension aims only 
at relaxation or resolution and every state of relaxation 



ORGAN INFERIORITY COMPENSATED 205 

must, for life to continue, be followed by a tension. So 
a rhythm is set up which is the rhythm of life. A mass 
of protoplasm absolutely relaxed would be a spineless, 
nerveless and therefore motionless body which would 
never subsequently move of itself. So that in the relaxed 
tissues, mental and physical, after the discharge of the 
activity, there must be a nucleus of a new tension, an 
embryonic wish which is to be the father of the new ten- 
sion; or else a part of the old wish must be left as the 
beginning of the new one, in w^hich case the discharge of 
energy producing the relaxation would not be complete 
each time. Possibly an absolutely complete discharge 
would be synonymous with death. 

We have seen that if the activities proposed for the 
child do not enlist the cooperation of the unconscious 
wish, there is never a real accomplishment, but only a 
pretended one, and if it is not thought that the pretended 
accomplishments are not as good as the real ones, it will 
seem necessary to chose the real accomplishments for the 
young and set them the task of achieving the real things 
of life. Now, what are the tasks that can be set for 
children to accomplish as something really valuable to 
society? 

The only thing accomplished by the effort to lift a ship 
was the heating of the individual's body vv^ho tried. The 
only effect of the effort to master the meaning of 
Shakespeare or Vergil or Napier or Lavoisier is the 
wearing of grooves in the brain of the child. On the 
other hand, the only result worth attaining by mortals is 
a result effected upon the external world. This is true 
both because of the effect on the v/orld and the effect on 
the individual. They are both different. The only result 



V' 



2o6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

attained by a great many people is a resulting change In 
themselves by virtue of which they react to the world 
in a manner different from the way they did. This Is 
the only result gained by the present system of education 
from the kindergarten to the doctorate. It may be said 
that the full course of twenty years of education may 
be preparing the young person to follow some calling 
when it calls, though there is a great of diversity of 
opinion about this point. We never shall be able to tell 
whether it does or not, because we never shall know how 
the boy who has gone through college would have done if 
he had not gone, and our own testimony about ourselves 
Is worthless. 

Turning the Child from Reality 

Is the change to which we subject the children for 
twenty years in schools and colleges a real change and a 
desirable change? I believe that up to the present time 
the only essential change has been an undesirable one. 
What we have really accomplished in the youth of our 
country is a turning them away from reality. 

There have been many motives for turning children 
away from reality, the same motives we have ourselves 
for turning away from reality, motives which may be 
grouped under the one rubric — undesirability. To con- 
sciousness of a certain type and at a certain stage of 
development reality Is undesirable because it Is bad or 
unpleasant. It is hard, it is unsympathetic, hostile, it Is 
ugly, and fatiguing, and It smells bad. In contrast to 
this ideality is everything that reality is not. Heaven 
Is the mental projection of everything that is idealized, 



TURNING CHILD FROM REALITY 207 

the product of a phantasy compensating for the sense of 
inferiority, of lack of mastery, of misery in general, 
which a certain type of humanity experiences in its con- 
tact with the world. 

Just as the infant annihilates an uncomfortable sen- 
sation with a wriggle or represses the pangs of hunger 
by the ecstatic sucking on its thumb, so do adults 
annihilate the adversities of an objective world by a 
mental wriggle, and repress the pangs of unsatisfied 
desire of all kinds by ecstatic absorption In an ideal 
vision or phantasy. If we have not what we think we 
want, we can get it Ideally by vivid imagination. In 
A Kiss for Cinderella, little " Miss Thing " wishes so 
hard. In order to balance her unhappy lot, that she suc- 
ceeds In a dream in imagining a ball exactly as she would 
desire it. 

This turning away from reality Is inevitable when the 
mental content of the person is words rather than ideas 
or things. The use of money as a medium of exchange 
of goods is analogous to the use of words as a means 
of exchange of Ideas (=things=goods) . The special 
attention to money as such makes the numismatist or 
the bank teller or the miser. The special attention to 
words as such makes the philologist or the lexicographer 
or the lunatic. 

We cannot give our boys and girls practical experience 
in geography by sending them from one country to 
another. Some of them take it themselves by running 
away, and of these many make very fine men. Those not 
so fine are not less fine solely on account of their 
travels and experience of the world, but for other rea- 
sons. 



2o8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

We cannot give our boys and girls practical experience 
in the household arts. Only a few get it, and the number 
is diminishing yearly. An attempt to make up for it is 
being made by the schools with courses in sewing and 
domestic science. But the actual time that is devoted to 
this activity is so short and the results are so meagre 
that they can be ignored. 

We cannot as a part of a school course adequately 
train young people to be stenographers and typewriters. 
We cannot, in short, make of them valuable operatives 
or workers of any kind while they are in school or college. 
If they turn out to be good workers, it is in spite of their 
school tasks, and not because of them. What, then, do 
we do with them in our educational institutions? We do 
two things to their unconscious wishes. We repress 
their unconscious wishes to do real things in the world, 
for there is no real thing done in school. I have been 
many times mildly disgusted with the universal attitude 
of boys and girls toward the visible result of their school 
work, results visible in the shape of exercises in algebra, 
English, French, Latin. Naturally, of course, they 
throw them away, as soon as they think the teacher's 
eye is finally removed from them. And I myself in 
earnest zeal collected notes in college, thinking I might 
use them some time, but I have never once had occasion 
to refer to them. The student knows that every word he 
writes, every sum he does, every exercise he finishes has 
been done and repeatedly done by millions of other chil- 
dren. Every fact imparted to him in biology, for in- 
stance, is better expressed and more beautifully illustrated 
in numberless inexpensive manuals, any one of which 
could be gotten on almost an hour's notice, if he had 



TURNING CHILD FROM REALITY 209 

any use for it. There Is In this kind of prescribed work 
a sort of double uselessness for the student. If he did 
it as well as a school child or a college man could pos- 
sibly do It, there is a multitude of other forms in which 
the same work has been done and all of them as good or 
better. 

I emphasize this point In order to bring out the fact 
that one of the main unconscious wishes is here In every 
child frustrated, namely the wish for superiority, and I 
am sure that the wish for superiority, for mastery, for 
victory, is a wish for a real mastery over the external 
world and not a mastery of self. And this victory over 
the external world is rendered impossible by waging the 
battle in a place immured from the world, in the school 
(=schola=leisure=absence of real work), and the high- 
school pupils take for their graduating motto Ex scholae 
vita in scholam vitae/^ which fitly symbolizes the segrega- 
tion. Thus are the main unconscious wishes .inevitably 
frustrated. It Is agreed, by common consent of all 
parties, of pupils, teachers and parents, that the work 
of the schools and colleges cannot of Itself be really 
productive. 

But I do not believe that the most educative activity, 
that which draws out of a man or woman the best that 
is in him or her, can possibly be an activity which re- 
presses the unconscious desire to do real things, acomplish 
real results, create real new entities, which in the real 
world every real worker Is doing from the labourer to 
the banker, from the switchman to the railroad pres- 
ident (?). 

If we should say to a child, " You've got to play till 

* Out from the life of school into the school of life, 



2IO THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

you're twenty-five; you've got to make believe till you're 
a full-grown man," he would revolt at the thought, for 
even the play of the most real children is an imitation 
of the real activities they see about them. They want 
to be policemen, firemen, engineers, storekeepers, chey 
consciously desire to do the very things they see adults 
do, and the system of education handed down from anti- 
quity represses their conscious desires for concrete reality 
into their unconscious, It continues this repression for 
twenty years in some cases, requiring them to accept 
words In place of things, symbols in lieu of the realities 
academically symbolized. 

Possible Reality in Child* s Life 

And what are the real things which, in spite of the 
academic barriers designed apparently to keep real things 
out, — what are the real things which the boy or girl 
gets In the artificial life of school or college? For they 
do, in spite of their Immurement, get some reality. A 
common distinction Is made between lessons, lectures, 
tasks, exercise, etc., and the school or college " activities " 
which we all know are quite the opposite in character, 
but are academlclzed in order to fit Into the system. 
They get football and basket-ball and societies and dances, 
and the boys and girls get each other, which is no doubt 
very good for them. They get to know each other bet- 
ter, but for this they have not to thank the teachers or 
superintendents or the system In general. They are face 
to face with reality In the shape of each other, but a 
reality toned down and made constrained and artlfi- 



POSSIBLE REALITY IN CHILD'S LIFE 211 

cial by the aggressive presence of teachers and equip- 
ment. 

I said that the unconscious wishes of the student are 
repressed in two ways, by the suppression of the wish 
for superiority, which can be satisfied only on concrete 
reality, and there is another which I have not mentioned. 
It is the substitution for it of a highly artificial system of 
unrealities, the net result of which on the student is an 
unconscious or partly conscious impression of hypocrisy, 
deception and insincerity. Even in the ancient Roman 
times whence all this pedagoguery originated, Juvenal 
satirized the senselessness of the school children arguing 
about supposititious problems. 

I am aware that I seem to verge toward realism and 
away from idealism (the ideal being the consequently 
superior), and invite the uncomplimentary comments of 
all who deem themselves idealistic and aspiring to higher 
ideals, the life of reason as opposed to the life of passion, 
the intellectual as opposed to the material, and I shall by 
thoughtless ones be branded as a crass materialist. But 
I feel that the concept of the development of the mind- 
body combination which I shall propose is as truly ide- 
alistic as possibly could be, and at the same time remain 
practical. 

For I think the time will some day come when children 
will be taught to do what they can constructively and 
creatively accomplish. We proceed today upon the prin- 
ciple that an individual cannot actually produce any 
valuable work until he is about twenty-five years old, 
whereas we know that physical puberty comes to men as 
early as fourteen and women as early as twelve. We 
thus keep from productive work some women until ten 



212 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

or twelve years after they are physically capable of 
maternity, and some men for almost as many years are 
kept from creative work. In other words, dominated by 
the analogy between the comparatively greater length of 
the period of infancy in humans than in other animals, 
we consciously and purposely attempt to lengthen the 
period of adolescence, thinking thereby to make an added 
improvement. We have thought to improve the adult- 
hood by keeping the young people adolescent as long as 
possible, because kittens and chickens who can forage for 
themselves after a very brief period of maternal care 
are not highly spiritual beings. We have gone on the 
principle that, in order to fit the individual best to fight 
the battle of real life, we should keep him from battle 
as long as possible, as if the best preparation for any 
activity was assiduously not doing that very thing, as if 
the deepest knowledge of any object were gained by care- 
fully keeping the individual isolated from that object, so 
that he could not hear, see, touch or exercise any of his 
senses upon it. 



v'' 



Early Acquaintance with Reality 



I am convinced that the best preparation for the world 
reality that can be given for the child from the earliest 
moment when it can dispense with personal maternal care, 
is actual concrete acquaintance with the realities of the 
world, and furthermore that every generation of humans 
has been prepared for Its later experiences of life solely 
by means of the earlier experiences of the same life, and 
that, too, in spite of any organized attempt to imprison 
him In schools. 



EARLY ACQUAINTANCE WITH REALITY 213 

Is it impossible that children should be unable to do 
any productive work as soon as they can handle simple 
tools? I believe that the training which the child can 
get in natural surroundings in a rural district in touch 
with the animal and vegetable world is the training which 
best fits him to cope later with the various emergencies 
of human existence. That this is not the uniform result 
in the case of country-bred youth I admit, but I think 
it is the fault of the human element in the country and 
not the nature element. 

As the tendency is for children born and bred in the 
country to go to the city, so there should be a reciprocal 
tendency of city-born children to go to the country. If 
it is reasonable for a human to desire every kind of 
experience, those in the city and in the country should 
change places. In the country a child can be productive 
at a very early age in doing things for which only vision 
and locomotion are necessary, such as herding various 
animals and later in caring for them when the children 
become strong enough. In the city too there is plenty 
of real work that children could do, if it were only 
permitted. I am not arguing for child-labour, which 
means excessive toil such as tending for wearisome hours 
the cotton machines in the South, but for a moderate 
amount of child activity which may be encouragingly 
productive for the child. In the country the work done 
by the child has the courage taken out of it through 
being unrewarded by selfish parents, whence comes the 
spiritual impossibility of it. 

Some parents will say, " Let the children help their 
parents." In the country boys can and do help their 
fathers, and to a limited extent in the city. And both 



214 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

boys and girls can help around the house. But it is 
notorious how much they prefer to help in other people's 
houses rather than helping their own families. In the 
first place they are, in helping other people than their 
own families, doing something of their own accord, and 
in the second they are much more generously rewarded in 
praise and other more material ways than at home, where 
their services are taken as a matter of course and as 
something due. Then there is the variety, which has 
a great appeal for everyone, not only children. I re- 
member as a boy leaving my own small garden uncared 
for, which my mother declared she could not understand, 
and going to work for the farmers in the neighbour- 
hood. 

Is a young person's recreation a bit less wholesome, if 
it comes after a brief period of actual creation of value? 
^ Because all work and no play makes Jack dull, are we to 
deprive him of all work? Work and play, child and man, 
city and country, travel and home should all be mingled 
in about equal proportions, so that everyone could have 
some of everything. 

True Democracy in Education 

This will in some distantly future day work out in 
somewhat the follov/mg manner, when there is true 
democracy and political and every other kind of equality. 
Children will be taken over from the parents to the state 
between the ages of five and ten years. If city born they 
will be transferred to the country, and vice versa, at a 
later date. They will be sent to different parts of the 
country, too, and engage in different occupations in all 



TRUE DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 215 

of which they will take huge delight. They will share in 
all the occupations of adults, and will keep moving in 
circuits from place to place, returning occasionally to 
their own parents, but in the meantime living with other 
children's parents in other homes. The children in each 
house will change periodically, thus giving the adults a 
new experience, as well as themselves. Each child will 
be required to keep a diary, which he or she will read 
to each new household, as they progress through the 
land, and thus the necessary practice in verbal training 
will be given. The homes thus exchanged will be kept up 
to a standard of efficiency and morale by government in- 
spectors, and the hours of work, recreation and study 
will be regulated according to the best interests of the 
world-nation for the production of the most useful 
citizens. 

There will be no hermits. Every social duty which 
should be performed by everyone will be performed by 
everyone. Everyone will have the widest possible variety 
of experience, including work, recreation and solitude, 
noise, music and silence, action and inaction in properly 
distributed proportions. There will not only be no actual 
ostensible hermits but there will be no spiritual hermits 
of the repressed variety. Everybody's mind will be open 
to everybody else's inspection, just as now everybody's 
face in Caucasian countries is open, and not veiled up to 
the eyes. Only when we shall finally be able to look the 
whole world in the face, not alone because we owe not 
any man but because or in spite of the fact that we do 
owe or have been guilty, or have failed, shall we be able 
to live in a really social atmosphere, and develop all the 
relations which alone evoke the fullest growth in our- 



2i6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

selves. In this more conscious illumined time to which 
I am now looking forward, when people shall have 
crawled forth from the egotistical prison cells in which 
they are now benighted — " Confined and pestered in this 
pinfold here " — true superiority will be recognized and 
repression of the kind which drives unpleasant or pain- 
ful ideas back into the unconscious will not exist. Any- 
body may say or attempt to do anything to anybody, 
and no offence can be taken, because an insult, for In- 
stance, will be unable to act as a complex-indicator in 
the person Insulted, but only In the insulting person, pro- 
vided that so much unwholesomeness remains as to render 
such waste of time possible. A person who insults another 
because he himself has done a wrong will be illuminated 
sufficiently to see that it is his own maladjustment which 
he is verbally expressing, and not the action of the in- 
sulted person. 

A Recitation Experiment 

At the present time, and with educational facilities 
limited as they are. It is of course Impracticable to attempt 
any of the innovations suggested above for the purpose 
of making the child's life more real. But the teacher In 
the school of the present day can reproduce to some 
extent the mental attitudes of adults in the world without 
the school. Even in such a subject so far removed from 
the present day as an ancient language, the method of 
handling the required work can be approximated to the 
spiritual environment which the child will find outside of 
the school. It may be said that the teacher Is In com- 
plete control of the situation In the classroom in his ability 



A RECITATION EXPERIMENT 217 

to reproduce through his actions the atmosphere which 
the child will meet in the world or to create a cloister- 
like atmosphere which will make the child's entrance into 
the world an entrance into an entirely strange place in 
which he will not know how to act. 

With a view to reproducing in his classroom some of 
the elements of the real extra-academic conditions a 
teacher of Latin in one of the high schools of a large city- 
instituted a scheme which he found to work very well. 
Its essential feature was the instant recognition of and 
immediate recompense for the mental activity of the 
pupil. It was to a certain degree modelled upon the old- 
fashioned spelling bee. Seating the members of the class 
at the beginning of the term in a chance order (alpha- 
betical), he allowed the first pupil in the class, as thus 
arranged, to recite first. If his recitation was defective 
in the slightest degree, the next pupil was given the chance 
to do the same thing. If he did it perfectly, he changed 
places with the first pupil. The actual shifting about was 
found to be an immense relief to the pupils, and legiti- 
mately released a great deal of physical energy which is 
superfluous at that age. The chance to " recite " passed 
down the whole class, giving an equal opportunity to each 
pupil to express himself in his best manner, which he con- 
stantly studied by comparison with the mistakes of others. 
When a pupil at the head of the class made a perfect 
recitation he went to the foot of the class and had the 
opportunity to make his way again to the head. Each 
complete progress through the class was recorded by 
the teacher, and the relative accomplishments of all the 
pupils were on record, and available for report at any 
time according to their positions in the class and the 



21 8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

number of times they had gone from the foot to the head. 
The similarity of the situation to extra-mural reality is 
twofold, for the child can by this means get an immediate 
reward for his attention and his effort and he can plan 
by preparation for more distant ends and aims. At the 
end of one day's recitation each pupil's position in the 
class Is registered by the fact that he is represented by a 
card, and the cards can either be collected or handed in 
by the pupils in the exact position in which they were at 
the end of the period. At the beginning of the next day's 
recitation the cards are laid on the desks in the order in 
which they were taken up and the game goes on at exactly 
the point where It was interrupted. There is thus a con- 
tinuity which is preserved for a whole term. 

A word should be said as to just what Is meant by a 
" recitation." It can mean any unit of expression, great 
or small, which the teacher finds it best to use. For in- 
stance, in beginners' Latin classes a " recitation " means 
the inflection of the singular of a noun, or the reading 
and translation of a short sentence of Latin. In third- 
year Latin it may mean the translation of a paragraph of 
Cicero, or a sentence or a clause, according to the exigen- 
cies of the case. It may mean the translation of a sen- 
tence from English into Latin, or the statement concern- 
ing the syntax of a noun or a verb. 

In order to correlate the attention of all the pupils, 
the teacher invites the criticism of each and every one. 
Anyone having a criticism to make raises his hand, and 
at the proper time is recognized by the teacher, exactly 
as a member of a deliberative assembly Is recognized by 
the chair. If the criticism Is just, the pupil making It is 
allowed to go ahead of the one sitting ahead of him, who 



A RECITATION EXPERIMENT 219 

takes the inferior place. Any suggestion on the part of 
the pupils about any point connected with the work is 
accepted by the " chair," but if it is ruled out as being 
a bad one, in any way unsocial, as obstructing the work 
in hand rather than furthering it, the maker of the sug- 
gestion is fined by being required to go back one place. 
Thus is secured a high degree of flexibility, a true democ- 
racy, and a focussing of attention on the work to be done. 
The conduct of the recitation is in the hands of the 
pupils themselves, and it is sometimes Inspiring to see 
the intensity of interest that is manifested, each pupil 
trying his best to improve his position in the class by 
studying the performances of the others. So tense was 
the atmosphere on one occasion, so breathlessly did the 
class as a whole watch the performance of a particularly 
good student that the ticking of a small clock in a closet 
in the classroom was quite audible. The details of this 
scheme are so interesting, so close to the unconscious 
wish for superiority does it bring even the work con- 
nected with a dead language, that the pupils have them- 
selves made many suggestions which have been adopted, 
materially changing certain features of it, and, I am 
told, it is in a continual process of evolution. 

The " work " of the teacher, as regards details which 
are purely academic and non-social, is reduced to a mini- 
mum. On the principle that the pupils are the ones who 
should develop themselves, and that the teacher should 
not be the only one whose mind is to be improved, the 
expressions of personality are almost entirely on the part 
of the pupils. The teacher could leave the class and the 
work go on in his absence, almost as well, after the class 
as a whole has grasped the main idea of it. In this sense 



\ 



220 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

It IS highly democratic, social and progressive. There is 
no theme which may not come up In connection with the 
work and be treated with the utmost ability of any of 
the members of the class. The lecturing tendency of the 
teacher Is properly reduced, and the points are brought 
out by the Individual activities of the pupils. It has been 
a continual surprise and delight on the part of the teacher 
to see how many new points of view the pupils. In this 
scheme, have the confidence to bring out, and this teacher 
believes that the dead language Latin, handled in this 
way, is much more alive than some of the biology which 
Is taught In the ordinary method. 

While the strictly administrative work of the teacher 
is reduced to a minimum by this developing method of 
conducting a recitation, his duties of guide and adviser are 
much increased because he has to meet new situations 
continually. The relations of the topics connected with 
the life of today are real and not artificial. Not only In 
the Cicero classes Is the parallel between present condi- 
tions and those at Rome In the days of the conspiracy 
brought out by the pupils themselves, according to their 
observation of the life of today as they get it out of 
school, but in the lower classes there is a special means 
of making the schoolroom environment much more like 
that of the world which the pupil will later enter. The 
teacher in short reacts to the expressions of the pupils 
in exactly the same way, wherever possible, in which 
the people whom the pupils would meet with the 
greatest advantage to themselves would act toward 
them. 

A great resistance Is manifested to the conditions of 
this scheme by the pupils who are unable to face the 



A RECITATION EXPERIMENT 221 

adversities of the world. It is very much like a defeat 
and in some children least able to cope with the world 
arouses a deep resentment at first to be required to go 
back and physically and literally give way before a supe- 
rior. His inferiority is " rubbed in " in a very unpleasant 
manner — at first, until he finds that he can by his own 
efforts recover the position he has lost. But once having 
found out how quick are the rewards for his sincere ef- 
forts, how instantly he can produce an effect with them, he 
reahzes that he has it in his power to place himself as high 
in the class as he wishes. 

The experience of this teacher with this scheme of 
eliciting the expressions of the individuality of the pupil 
has shown him that the unit of expression is very small 
at first and that it gradually increases in scope. For in- 
stance, In the teaching of Latin prose he has found that 
a preparation was necessary in the minds of most pupils 
for translating the English into Latin which they would 
not themselves make unless they were put through it In a 
regular manner — namely, the arrangement of the order 
of the Latin words. The scheme of securing this de- 
veloped Into the following. The pupil first reciting a 
sentence was required to rephrase the English in such a 
way as to give the English words In the Latin order, 
after which the next person gave a part or the whole of 
the Latin translation. Thus " Caesar led his army out 
of camp and drew It up " would have to be " meta- 
phrased " as: "Caesar army from-camp havlng-been- 
led-out drew-up." It turned out that the process was very 
difficult at first but became quite easy later, and produced 
In the pupil a much greater power of handling the Latin. 
Then It developed that a very valuable result was secured 



222 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

by giving the sentence to a number of pupils equal to the 
number of the Latin words In It, and getting each one to 
contribute one word, repeating what had been given be- 
fore him. This produced a very keen attention on the 
part of the pupil, who realized that he had not only to 
remember what his predecessors had said, and attend to 
their pronunciation very carefully but that he had to be 
absolutely sure of what he was going to say, because on 
that sentence he would probably get only one chance. 
Furthermore, he never knew when he would be called on 
to recite, because he never could tell how many pupils 
ahead of him would fall down on some detail In the pro- 
nunciation or other feature of the performance. 

Slowly and by a natural evolution this very simple 
scheme worked out Into a great many complicated de- 
tails, each pupil taking an Interest In contributing some 
recommendation to help the scheme along as a social pro- 
ceeding, although the words social or democratic were 
never used In the room. The scheme worked Itself, be- 
came a living thing, because It appealed to a fundamental 
Instinct of human nature, the same instinct which Is the 
basis of all democratic government. It had the further 
result of giving to the pupils a feeling of control, which 
obviated the necessity of the teacher's asserting verbally 
his authorIty= In fact. It removed from the room the 
feeling which is unconsciously present in the mind of 
every pupil in the ordinary schoolroom, a feeling that he 
was acting under authority. It was gratifying to see how 
the infringements of the principle that all activity had 
to be helpful were not only paid for by the pupils' sug- 
gesting penalties for each other, but how frequently when 
a pupil had even unwittingly or forgetfully done anything 



r' 



PERFECTION OF NATURE 223 

obstructive, he would go back one place, thus Imposing 
a fine upon himself for doing something which it is pos- 
sible that no one but himself saw. 

A democratic form of schoolroom management has 
been introduced into some schools and labelled the 
" school city." In each classroom a mayor is elected, a 
police department, etc., with the court and trials and 
other legal machinery, but it seems that this teacher's 
scheme was far simpler and came much nearer to getting 
at the real unconscious motives of the pupils. 

Exceptionless Perfection of Nature 

One is impressed with the tremendous unity of nature, 
everything except man apparently completely fulfilling 
its appointed function all the time without interruption. 
Man alone seems to be interrupted, his development ar- 
rested, his perfection prevented. But we do see imperfect 
things in nature, dwarfed, blasted trees and other ap- 
parent miscarryings. Yet they are as perfect as their 
environment allows them to be. Are all humans as per-"^ 
feet as their surroundings permit? They must be. Are 
there no perverse humans? Is there no wilful wrong? 
There can be none, for why should we believe that nat- 
ural laws work less perfectly in human than in plant or 
animal life? Is not the most bestial human the best 
product that his circumstances could make of him? Why 
do we blame him for his inhuman condition? Is he not 
taking, just as we take, the only steps possible to express 
his power, to get his feeling of superiority, his control 
over his environment? 



224 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Why Educate at All? 

What, then, do we try to do in education? Improve on 
nature, whose laws are inexorable and perfect? Or is 
there some training which is superlatively human, which 
the uneducated lack and the academically educated re- 
ceive? What the human gets by being trained in the 
specifically human traits is a development of his con- 
sciousness and one of the main objects of education is 
to bring into consciousness as many thoughts as possible 
in such a way as to give him a greater power over his 
surroundings. And this amplifying of the conscious life 
is not an increase of scope of consciousness at any given 
moment, but is, on the contrary, the individual's ability 
to bring into consciousness more of past experiences than 
he would naturally do if left to himself. For the nat- 
ural man, without education, is limited in his scope of 
consciousness by the repressions which the fortuity of 
his environment imposes upon him. The uneducated 
man is a perfect and flawless effect of all the causes which 
determine him body and soul, but the educated man is 
the only one who has the power, however seldom he uses 
it, of altering his psychical environment. 

Physical vs. Psychical Environment 

Perhaps I will have to define what I mean by a psy- 
chical environment and differentiate it from a physical 
one. Any man can change his physical environment by, 
for instance, setting his house on fire, or by raising a 
field of potatoes, but in so doing he does not change his 
psychical environment, which is the way he mentally re- 



AMPLIFYING THE CONSCIOUSNESS 225 

acts to the physical ones, but by conscious effort along 
directed lines he can change his mode of psychical re- 
action to physical surroundings. He can change it from 
a passive, receptive one in which he follows the inexo- 
rable laws of nature in the same way that animals do, or 
he can acquire through directed thinking the only char- 
acteristic in which he can differ from the animals. His 
inherent difference from the lower orders consists in 
his ability to acquire the greater ajnpUtiide of conscious- 
ness referred to above. There is no doubt that the savage 
is little above the animal in this respect, and that the 
thoughts of the seer are as far removed as possible from 
the dim consciousness of the uncivilized, and that the 
general consensus of all men is that the seer's thoughts 
are more productive and have a wider influence than 
the savage's. Therefore society has created the seer 
and held him up as a goal toward which all men should 
aspire to attain and travel as far on the road thither as 
Is possible. In creating this standard soclet}^ has placed 
a greater value on conscious thoughts, so expressed that 
they can be reproduced in the minds of many people, than 
it has placed on any other human creation. 

Amplifying the Consciousness 

From this the consciousness-increasing aim of conscious 
education emerges clearly into view — to bring more 
things (or thoughts) into consciousness, but they must 
be thoughts of a certain kind, thoughts having In them 
enough of a quality common to all mankind to be accepted 
by all, and a further quality such that they Inspire to 
action, also of a certain kind. The kind of action re- 



1 



226 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

quired is that which is for the common good, or for 
the attainment of social aims. 

One of the advantages gained by the control over the 
mental reactions to physical environment is that a per- 
son having such control over himself is not harmed in 
the same way by the so-called adversities coming to him 
from the external world, and is not afraid to exert him- 
self upon it. Much accomplishment that would be put 
through by people is prevented by their fear, either of 
their own inability to accomplish or of the harmful re- 
sults which might come to them from pushing their ef- 
forts to the utmost. 



Academic Education to Remove Unconscious Fear 

The best academic education partially removes this 
fear, which is largely to blame for the failures of the 
youths and maidens who are being academically educated 
to accomplish the work laid out for them. But when 
we remember that all fear is unconsciously determined, 
we see that the person who because of fear does ill at 
school or college is the very one who will most be helped 
by acquiring this new knowledge. He is also the one 
who is dominated by fear outside of school. 

When I say that all fear is unconsciously determined 
I mean that fear is really at bottom unconscious desire. 
A conscious fear of being unable to do a given lesson is 
really an unconscious desire to do it, and a state of mind 
in which fear is specially predominant, such as a phobia, 
is one where there is a strong desire (in the phobia 
fundamentally sexual) which is being unsatisfied, 



SUBLIMATION AS EDUCATIONAL AIM 227 

Siihlimation as Educational Aim 

The fact, mentioned above, that the only good results 
from the present system of education come from the dis- 
guising of the unconscious wishes which strive for ex- 
pression may be explained by saying that the only good 
derived from education is from sublimation. Education, 
from the side of the learner, is a form of sublimation. 
But sublimation Is achieved not only in education. In- 
deed, it is achieved less through formal education, that 
is, by fewer persons than succeed in other ways in sub- 
limating their unconscious wishes. And the one aim of 
formal education ought to he sublimation. I have stated 
this before in saying that the pupil should be taught to 
transfer his mental activity from the world of phantasy 
in which he was born to the world of reality into which 
he sometimes never is born. That is otherwise expressed 
by saying that the unconscious wish which in home educa- 
tion gets repressed before the child is old enough to go 
to school should first be recognized by educators, who 
never have recognized it, and then employed in sub- 
limated forms, a thing that has never yet been consciously 
done. It could not, of course, be consciously done, be- 
cause the very existence of the unconscious as a craving 
for life, love and activity was unknown. 

But knowing, as we do now, something of the exist- 
ence, the nature and the mechanisms of the unconscious 
wish, we shall gradually begin to be able to get hold 
of it, and to sublimate those portions of it which should 
be sublimated and give the individual a scientific knowl- 
edge of those portions which should not be sublimated. 
This could not have been done before today, because 



228 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

only today have we learned of the existence of the un- 
conscious wish, any more than telephones could have 
been invented before the existence and nature of electric- 
ity had been discovered. But we can begin tomorrow, at 
any rate, if not today, to use the energies of this uncon- 
scious wish in the complete education, in the true sense 
of " drawing out " of it by means of our gradually in- 
creasing knowledge of its nature and mechanisms. 

Rapport vs. Quiz 

I imagine that the schools of the future will be con- 
ducted on a plan radically different from that now 
followed. There will be no " quizzes " and no attitude 
on the part of the teacher which suggests criticism of 
the work of the pupils, but there will be greater personal 
relation of rapport between pupil and teacher than ever 
could be now under the question-and-answer quiz- 
regime. 

There is nothing in the whole present educational 
system better designed to emphasize and accentuate the 
unconscious antagonism between pupil and teacher than 
the teacher's simply asking the pupil a question and 
sitting eagle-eyed for the opportunity of swooping down 
upon any flaw in the answer. This comminuting of 
knowledge (in the place of the magnifying of wisdom) 
has reached such a degree of absurdity that teachers are 
marked for their success in eliciting complete sentences 
as answers to questions, where the performance of the 
pupil should not be a single sentence but a sustained 
verbal expression of an Intellectual point of view or a 
feeling. 



RAPPORT VS, QUIZ 229 

The unconscious antagonism of the pupil against the 
teacher is aroused by the implication contained in the 
very act of expressing the relation of the teacher to the pu- 
pil as a question about a statement in a book. The 
question implies the Inability of the pupil to answer it 
properly, else why should It be put? If It is not put for 
the purpose of making one pupil wretchedly miserable 
because he cannot answer it at all, In the hope that he 
will be stirred by emulation if perchance another pupil 
in his " class " should be able to answer it, it is put with 
the design of bringing out the defective elements in the 
pupil's information, which of course his unconscious Is 
most unwilling to have brought out and exhibited before 
the eyes of all his classmates — sometimes as many as 
sixty or seventy In some of the public schools of larger 
cities. And the question-putting method's effect on the 
teacher's unconscious makes him as Impossible on his 
side as the pupil soon becomes on his own. The im- 
plication In the case of the teacher is that he is In a posi- 
tion to put the question and to correct the answer. There 
seems nothing extraordinary in this? The net result for 
the teacher is to make him more and more, as the years 
go on, merely a censorious critic, unless he instinctively, 
as many do, tends in the direction of sympathy for and 
Interest in his pupils. 

The situation of being placed in a position where it is 
one's duty to kill error may have delighted the soul of 
some puritanic ancient schoolmaster, but the modern 
way will be to ignore error and encourage right ex- 
pression. The only way rightly to give attention to er- 
rors Is to analyse the causes of why they were committed, 
and in the schools of the future, if there are enough 



230 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

educational analysts, that may be done and the result 
may be both interesting and profitable. 

There will be no quizzes nor any quizziform attitude 
on the part of the teacher. Questioning by the teacher 
has also another implication, which is that the teacher 
thinks it is impossible to get an expression of the pupil's 
individuality in any other way. It may be physically im- 
possible for the teacher to get that expression through 
questions because of the large numbers of pupils, but 
I am sure that it is impossible as a matter of mental 
mechanism to get any expression, not to say information, 
by means of the question form of attack by the teacher. 
As for questions in general one knows, even children 
know, that a sincere question is asked only for the pur- 
pose of getting information which the questioner has not. 
And when it comes to playing or making believe that the 
teacher wants to know the " answers " to the questions 
which he propounds, any child can play at that game, if 
it so desires, out of school, when it plays school, and 
there is little sense In making this double pretence in a 
school where real things ought to be. The child has to 
pretend that the teacher needs to be told things, and 
the teacher has to pretend that he Is very anxious to 
learn. On the other hand, children are very much In- 
terested, of course, to acquire bits of information which 
the teacher has not. From this point of view the only 
interesting teacher is the vulnerable one, the one in 
whose knowledge, since It Is a matter of knowledge con- 
cerning things which are In themselves hopelessly unin- 
teresting, holes can be poked. The rare teacher who Is 
absolutely master of his subject Is naturally unavailable 
for this kind of entertainment. One cannot corner him 



RAPPORT VS. QUIZ 231 

or find a weak spot in him any more than In a wall of 
rock. His mental fagade has been set In mortar 
years ago, and Is unsusceptible to any changing by any 
efforts that a pupil could bring to bear on him. If 
nothing can be done with him, what earthly Interest 
has he? 

It Is idle to think that children are interested in sub- 
jects in the curriculum as such. They are mildly In- 
terested in the teachers for a few hours or minutes until 
they have been classified as cross, pleasant, good (effi- 
cient) or bad (inefficient), and then the interest returns 
to the perennial one — interest in each other and the ef- 
fects they can produce on each other. Very clever chil- 
dren can produce effects on other children by learning 
the lessons with ease, reciting them with fluency and 
asking the teacher sly questions, all of which place such 
a child in the limelight of the classroom stage, in which 
the other children, not the teacher, are the audience. 
The other children, not being able to shine in this arti- 
ficial activity, are forced either to give up the Idea of 
efi^ecting any change on their environment, or to devote 
their energies, whose legitimate object is the effecting 
of such a change, to producing that effect on their com- 
panions. Hence spit-balls. 

It was stated at the beginning of this section that 
the main purpose of education is the causing of un- 
conscious thought by conscious action. If this is so, 
what is the effect of the conscious actions which take place 
in such large numbers In the schoolroom upon the un- 
conscious thoughts of the scholars? Nobody has ever 
taken the trouble to consider that point except remotely 
In the general statement that bad lessons and bad conduct 



232 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

are a bad example for the pupil; therefore good conduct 
should be Insisted on by the teacher. 

The question of the invisible effect boys and girls pro- 
duce on each other by being in a schoolroom together 
has been answered both ways by separating them and 
by coeducating them. But very few, even educators, 
know even instinctively what harm the conscious actions 
of the boys can do to the unconscious thoughts of the girls 
and vice versa, or what good. And they do not know the 
nature of the damage caused by bringing up girls in 
female academies and sending boys away to boys' " prep " 
schools. 

Another Aim 

The causing of unconscious thought by means of con- 
scious acts as a purpose of education will not be agreed to 
by all pedagogues, because there is no accurate way of 
measuring the effect on the unconscious thought caused 
by the conscious action; if we cannot see the effect, how 
can we measure it? how know that what we do has any, 
or the right, effect? This is very unsatisfactory, because 
in our present day question and answer, lecture and read- 
ing and advanced seminar style of education, one can 
get immediate measurements or estimates of the con- 
scious effect produced by conscious action. We note 
them down, in fact, proportioned on a scale of lOO, and 
mail these notes frequently to parents. We ask the 
pupil and find out immediately just what he knows and 
how much effect we have had on his conscious mental 
activity by our conscious actions, and if the effect has not 
been sufficient we increase the cause. This would seem 
to express the blind way in which present systems work. 



ANOTHER AIM 233 

As a matter of fact there Is absolutely no sure standard 
by which the unconscious thought-effect, derived from 
conscious activity, can possibly be numerically measured. 
The effect caused in the unconscious by conscious activity 
can, however, now be traced, and it will not be long be- 
fore it can be more accurately known than the conscious. 
It is, of course, estimated by Indirect methods, but these 
are more sure than the direct methods of question and 
answer, laboratory note book and thesis, which are used 
to estimate the conscious progress of the student. 

It is a well-known fact that the amount of conscious 
mental activity necessary to graduate from any school 
or college Is comparatively small, and Is easily accom- 
plished by some persons, who are free from the inhibi- 
tions so common to all others, in half to three-quarters 
of the time usually taken. The reason why the average 
student spends four years in doing the high-school work, 
and from four to six years in doing the college work, Is 
that he is influenced^ by tradition and other suggestions 
to believe that the work is hard and must take so long. 
Another reason is that there is in both secondary and 
higher educational methods an Inordinate amount of time 
wasted, during which the pupil or student is actually re- 
tarded so that the slowest may keep up with him. There 
is no reason why all boys and girls of a certain grade of 
maturity should not do all the preparation for college 
in one year instead of four. If they were willing to do 
it, and if at the same time they were not actually pre- 
vented by the present methods of recitations in large 
classes from going ahead as fast as they can. The actual 
procedure in a so-called recitation is a method of the 
most dreary slowness compared with the vivacity with 



234 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

which the individuals composing the class attack prob- 
lems no less intellectual, when they understand the im- 
portance and vitality of the subjects for their own lives. 



Function of the Teacher of the Future 

So that the duty of the teacher of the future will be 
to prepare the disposition of the pupil for the acquire- 
ment of knowledge and not to give instructon itself. It 
would appear, if at the present time such a practice were 
carried on, that the teacher was not minding his business, 
for he would not immediately begin talking to his pupils 
about the lesson but would take them one at a time, and 
would at once begin to listen to a fellow-human talk 
about himself. Only in this way, by patient listening, 
can the teacher know a student. It has long been known 
that Magister Johannem Latinum docet Implies that the 
teacher knows Latin if he is to teach Latin, and further- 
more that he knows John. Up to date his knowledge of 
John has been a knowledge only of John's exterior 
superficial consciousness. In the schools of the future 
" magister " wall be required to know about John's uncon- 
scious, to have a knowledge both of its nature and the 
means of inferring it from his acts, words and other 
expressions. 

In order to get this knowledge he will have to learn 
from John more than he will ever be able to teach him, 
although the results of his knowledge of John's uncon- 
scious will be communicated to John and will be of far 
greater use to him than any other knowledge he now 
gains in school or college. 

So that in the place of recitations of large classes in 



FUNCTION OF TEACHER OF FUTURE 235 

which very little of human relation emerges, except petty 
rivalry, teasing and other forms of unconscious man- 
ifestations, there will be only a continual conference in 
private between the teacher and the pupils one at a time. 
The curriculum of cultural and other studies now covered 
can be increased in amplitude almost ad infinitum, if that 
still seems advisable, and the pupil will go from the 
teacher's study or conference room to the laboratory, the 
library, the gymnasium or the workshops and work with 
complete devotion, as soon as he understands the vitality 
of social relations. To the teacher especially equipped 
to teach expression in English he will go with an essay or 
extemporary speech, a problem or a series of questions, 
all suggested by his own thinking and working on the 
problems of life as he sees it. 

This will not necessarily do away with team work in 
learning. One of the great advantages will be that all 
school work will be done in school, and none of it in the 
interruptions of desultory home life, a condition which 
makes it at present so very hard for school children to 
do any work at home. The value of most children's 
home work is almost nil. There will be discussions of 
the points which come up in the literature read both in 
English and in foreign languages, and there will be con- 
versational meetings for the foreign language students. 
Pupils will be encouraged to study together where such 
combined methods do not tend to strengthen the stronger 
of the two and weaken the weaker, as is now so frequently 
the case. 

Attention will be given, in a way Impossible now in 
schools, to the development of the mental and moral as 
well as of the physical factors in the individual, and a 



236 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

development of them in a reasonable and scientific pro- 
portion. If athletics are good for some, they are good 
for all, and there will be provision made for all to share 
in them; but if it is found that they are unnecessary for 
all, as may very well be the case, it v/ill not be recom- 
mended for all. In any case there will be an opportunity, 
not now afforded, for the teacher to be in a position 
to know in detail of the needs of the individual as in- 
dicated by his now utterly unexplored unconscious, and 
put him in the v/ay of satisfying those needs to a degree 
that is not now possible, and never has been possible, 
except in the rarest cases, such, for instance, as those of 
John Stuart Mill and Thomas De Quincey; and in cases 
like the latter, the element which led to his taking opium 
can be detected and the unconscious wish impelling him 
to that course can be directed, in the newer education, to 
other and socially more available aims. 

Religion and Sex 

The great questions of religion and sex, so closely re- 
lated in the history of the individual as well as in that of 
the race, will be answered both in language so scientific 
that it will obviate the objections by which they are now 
practically ruled out of the schools except where they 
exist in a vestigial, rudimentary and completely de- 
vitalized condition, although they are questions which oc- 
cupy the unconscious mentality of all persons all the time. 
The erroneous solutions of the problems connected with 
religion and sex are responsible for a large part of the 
crime, disease and even war itself — that running amuck 
of the unconscious wish. 



RELIGION AND SEX 237 

Alongside of these much more weighty questions of re- 
ligion and sex, both of which are so intimately connected 
with the primordial craving of the ego, the actual ac- 
complishment of what are now such burdensome tasks 
for pupil and student will seem as nothing. It is a fact 
that a desire to satisfy sexual and religious curiosity, if 
not gratified in a natural and wholesome manner, may be 
the cause of much mental and moral confusion in later 
life. It is also a fact that these two fields of human 
curiosity are opened very early in life, and that they 
are explored without proper guidance, both because well- 
informed guides are few and far between, and because 
those who attempt to instruct young people in these two 
subjects are necessarily full of error coming from an 
ignorance of the unconscious and of psychical mechanisms 
generally. 

It has been proved again and again that children who 
receive warped views of the sexual relations in the narrow 
sense of genital sexuality, which they do at a surprisingly 
early age, receive therein a stamp which gives a perverted 
form to every subsequent impression, just as a mirror 
once broken into a dozen pieces will always thereafter re- 
flect light at a dozen different angles, and as a concrete 
sidewalk trodden when soft by a dog will always retain 
the footprints. The removal of these false or warped im- 
pressions will be effected when the soul is plastic, in the 
days even before adolescence, with greater ease and 
surety than it possibly could be later in life. Medical 
psychology of the analytic type is concerned chiefly in 
the remoulding of these early fortuitous and ill-balanced 
patterns in persons who have, because of the pressure of 
circumstances, become neurotics. The cause of the neu- 



238 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

rosis is always found to be a warping of the soul at a 
very early day, much as if exposed too early to the flames 
of love. The sensibilities of such people may be likened, 
too, to the warped condition of the lens of the eye which 
produces astigmatism, or to the paralysing of the muscles 
of accommodation which produces near-sightedness. 
Such people's physical vision Is always defective and must 
be corrected with artificial lenses. The spiritual vision 
of the neurotic, the satisfaction of whose early sexual 
curiosity has not been complete, leaving him to make er- 
roneous reasonings of his own about the things most 
personal and intimate to him. Is similarly warped, and 
all his life, unless he has the fortune to fall into the hands 
of an experienced medical psychologist, he sees the real- 
ities of life In a very much distorted form, due to the 
warping of his spiritual lens. The proper treatment can 
either supply him with an artificial one or straighten out 
his own. 

And so the ordinary subjects of the curriculum will in 
the schools of the future retire in Importance before the 
one great question of the sanitation of the sexual impluses 
In both the broad and the narrow sense. In speaking 
of sexuality in the narrow sense I mean of course the 
specifically genital sexuality which comes into existence at 
puberty. Definite Information which Is now not possessed 
by the majority of married couples on this point will un- 
doubtedly have to be given first In the schools, by men 
teachers to boys and to girls by married women teachers. 
It will have to be given first in the schools because It Is Im- 
possible to Instruct the mothers and fathers of children 
how to tell them the real facts of sex, both because they 
do not know these facts and because there Is an uncon- 



SEXUALITY IN A BROAD SENSE 239 

scious cause why It Is more dillicult for parents to talk 
to their own children about such matters. Later, when 
several generations of children, clear-eyed In their view 
of reproductive and productive creation and the rela- 
tions between them, have had children of their own, It 
may be possible for the schools to leave the matter In 
the hands of parents. At present, however, It Is amply 
manifest that parents are generally Incompetent to handle 
the matter themselves. No teacher who knows falls to 
see In almost all the adolescent children under his care 
the signs of unsatisfied sexual curiosity In their actions 
and In their attitude toward Intellectual matters. 

Sexuality in a Broad Sense 

Sexuality In the broad sense, however, has to be con- 
sidered In every action which the individual performs, and 
the manner In which he relates the broadly sexual to the 
specifically genital sexual Is of the greatest Importance to 
him in his entire philosophy of life. The sexual ques- 
tions, both In the broad and In the narrow sense, are 
pondered by each boy and girl, each man and woman, ac- 
cording to their nature and environment and their experi- 
ence. There Is no human being who Is not either a man 
or a woman or destined to become one, and the problems 
of sex are faced by each and every one of us In his or her 
own way. Everyone has a philosophy of life based on his 
relation to the life which he bears and which it Is his duty 
to transmit. Upon the proper solution of these problems 
depend his or her health and happiness. They form 
the core of existence and the root of all good and evil. 
Mankind has with consistent errancy averted Its gaze 



240 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

from the essential to the non-essential under the Impres- 
sion that the narrowly sexual would take care of itself 
If only the externals were carefully looked after. In 
many cases, therefore, It has sedulously watered a plant 
at whose root was a cutworm which they could and should 
but would not see. 

Part of this aversion to look sexuality squarely In the 
eye comes from an Infantile attitude toward the parent. 
It comes about In two ways first because of a positive 
prohibition on the father's or mother's part. They tell 
the child not to think of such subjects. A little girl Is 
made the object of one of the very common sexual In- 
vestigations carried on by children In their unwatched 
hours sometimes before their fifth year. In instinctive 
terror she runs home to her mother and begins to tell 
her the circumstances. Her mother hushes her up with 
" Awful ! " and " Unspeakable ! " or words to that effect. 
The little girl thinks that some terrible calamity has 
befallen her, and that probably she Is disgraced for life. 
She hangs her head for months and Is told by her mother, 
who Is Ignorant of the child mind, to stand up straight 
and act better, all of which confirms the poor child's 
suspicions that she has done something which has made 
it impossible for her ever to hold up her head properly. 
She later forgets all about It, voluntarily represses It 
from her consciousness because It Is painful to her, this 
innocent childish Incident which, if explained to her by 
a sympathetic and Intelligent mother, would never have 
so depressed her for so long a time. Eventually she suc- 
ceeds In forgetting it, but the Impression it made upon 
her, together with her mother's attitude toward It, has 
left an Imprint on her psyche which makes Impossible for 



THE MOTHER-INFANT ATTITUDE 241 

her the clear gaze at reality which ought to be the right 
of every human. Out of a really trivial episode the 
mother made an intolerably terrible experience for the 
blameless child and filled her mind with a wholly unjust 
sense of guilt which spoiled her forever for seeing things 
as they really are. This child Is spiritually in much the 
same condition as the babies who, through carelessness 
or ignorance on the part of the physician, are made blind 
at birth, or cripples, and ever after are unable to see 
or walk as the case may be. Such a permanent twist is 
given very frequently in the earliest childhood, and is 
manifested som^etimes forty or fifty years later. 

The Mother-Infant Attitude 

Now if this twist is existent in a large number of peo- 
ple, If they have, we shall not call It a weakness but a 
twist or warp which is going to run the wrong way of 
the tension some day just because the grain of the wood, 
so to speak, crosses the oar at the oarlock; If we never 
know what sort of an abyss we may be walking near, 
w^e are in a condition which Is not so good and advanta- 
geous and up-to-date as that condition would be where 
we knew just how we stood. For If we knew how we 
stood, we should be in a position to take steps in the 
right direction. Not knowing how we stand Is very much 
like being satisfied to leave everything to fate. If we 
are resigned to leave everything to fate, which Is con- 
stituted for most of us by external reality, we are like 
children who are satisfied to take everything they get 
from the mother and have not the ideas to look for or 
require more. It is only very young children who are 



242 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

thus content, in fact only infants. So the attitude toward 
the world which accepts the world as fate is an exces- 
sively infantile attitude. It is only through an active pur- 
suit in the external world after things which are sug- 
gested by internal mental activities, that we leave the 
Fate Attitude or the Mother-Infant Attitude. If, in other 
words, we are convinced, as I believe every thinking per- 
son is, that there is any knowledge attainable by us, which 
will give us more power over external reality, we show 
immediately our adult attitude in making every effort to 
attain that knowledge. 

The knowledge of the unconscious and of its mechan- 
isms is a knowledge which gives power not only over the 
external world but the mental, and gives power over it 
solely because of the added knowledge which it gives 
us of ourselves, our nature, our abilities, our loves, our 
hates, likes, dislikes, mannerisms and modes of thought. 

Methods More Elastic 

With the change of front on the part of the teacher 
made possible by the newer standpoint, a change of front 
from the group to the individual, will come a very great 
difference in the rate at which the subject-matter is 
covered. It will be possible if not probable that a student 
will devote more time consecutively to a given subject. 
It is characteristic of children to act with great enthusiasm 
and concentration, when once their interests are aroused. 
A student of sixteen just said to me, " I get waked up 
after about an hour," meaning that she became thor- 
oughly interested and eager to go on. I replied that 
frequently I got waked up myself, after an hour or two. 



METHODS MORE ELASTIC 243 

to a state of activity which seemed impossible at the 
beginning of any bit of work. 

The ringing of a bell in a recitation room of the twen- 
tieth century breaks off a great deal of unconscious ac- 
tivity which, being slow in getting up a momentum, is in 
some natures jarred by a sudden coming to a standstill 
or a shunting off on another track. I feel sure that in 
the schools of the future a subject will be studied by a 
student intensively, and naturally so, until a point is 
reached where a solid satisfaction is experienced by the 
student over a good-sized job done completely. This 
may take a whole day or several days. I see no reason 
why, for instance, Latin should not be studied in high 
school until a year's work is finished, say in ten weeks, 
and an examination taken. Then the subject could be 
temporarily dropped in favor of some other. In this 
way a student might finish off first and get credit for 
subjects that were easier for him and leave the harder 
ones for the time of his greater maturity. This is the 
more reasonable as there is so very great a change in 
the mental maturity of pupils between the ages of thirteen 
and seventeen. 

This elastic plan would allow some girls, for instance, 
who on entering high school are totally unfit for mathe- 
matics to postpone them until their fourth year. This 
is the year in which a great many pass successfully the 
work of the first year in mathematics, which however they 
have been taking term after term and failing in. They 
could, indeed, omit the study of mathematics entirely, if, 
and only if, an analysis of the pupil should indicate that 
she was a case of utter inability to master mathematics. 
This would not often be the case, because the careful 



244 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

analysis by the teacher would reveal and remove the 
causes lying in the unconscious of the pupil, causes which 
make the mathematics difficult. It would then be not dif- 
ficult, but very easy. 

It has been found that young people's interest in or 
distaste for a given subject is often conditioned not by 
any innate quality of their mental constitution but by 
their attitude toward it, which has been determined for 
them by some early impression made upon them by a 
parent or brother or sister. In the case of one boy on 
record it was not any incapacity of his own which ren- 
dered his learning of scientific subjects almost impossible, 
but it was the fact that his father had excelled in that 
branch, and had made very exacting requirements upon 
the boy to do very well in that subject, and was inept 
enough to express disappointment in, and resentment at, 
the boy for not showing an aptitude for them at once. 
How many special teachers know whether or not the signal 
failures of a pupil to do well in their subjects are caused 
by some home influence such as this? No discredit to 
them, to be sure, for not knowing, for not only do they 
lack the instrumentality to ascertain but they also have 
not at present the time to find out. Just as the difficulty 
of the scientific subjects was removed for the boy above 
mentioned when he was helped to understand why he 
could not do well in that subject, so in the future will any 
such difficulty be removed by an understanding given him 
by his adviser, tracing the cause of this difficulty. A dif- 
ficulty of this nature is almost invariably the result of an 
inhibition on the part of the boy or girl caused by some 
fancied relation of that subject to their father or mother. 
It is a relation, too, that is generally not consciously known 



SUMMARY 245 

to the pupil, so how could the teacher, not knowing any- 
thing of the unconscious, or the pupil, who also does not 
know, ever find out and illuminate this relation? 

Many times in the present system of education a pupil 
fails in a subject, drops it and takes up another in place 
of it because he fancies the other will be " easier." How 
does he know that French is easier than Latin? Is it 
or is it not? He does not know. He thinks it is, and 
frequently he thinks it is, because his mother or father 
want him to study Latin. If the parent advises Latin, 
the unconscious antagonism between parent and child 
(which exists everywhere and involves no blame to either 
parent or child, because neither knows of its existence) 
makes some other language take on a much greater 
attractiveness, partly because, not being the parent's 
choice, it thereby immediately can be exclusively the 
child's choice. This conflict is partly conscious, partly 
unconscious, in varying degrees in different cases. If the 
subject is chosen exclusively by the child, he is of course 
consciously or unconsciously on his own mettle to do 
well in it, and all the more so if there is some opposition 
on the part of the parent. 

Summary 

The unconscious unwillingness of pupils to do school 
work is caused by the early impressions received from 
their parents, whose influence, due to pardonable Igno- 
rance, is very bad for the later welfare of their children. 
The parent has the great responsibility of creating the 
mind of the child, a process which must be maintained 
for at least five years after birth. The worst influence 



246 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

exerted by the parent Is a failure to satisfy the child's 
inevitable sex curiosity. The effects of a perverted 
handling of this topic or a refusal to treat it properly 
gives a twist to the child's understanding not only of the 
most fundamental human relations but also of the things 
of the world apparently most remote from the sexual. 
The difference between directed and undirected think- 
ing, showing the unconscious wish as a tension, brings 
out the fact that all humans have a continuous wish or 
tension toward creation, either reproductive or produc- 
tive. The occurrence of ideas to the mind is discussed 
and the true meaning of thoughtless acts, which shows 
both teacher and parent a more scientific attitude with 
regard to attaching blame to children. The question of 
the policy of trying to strengthen what parents and 
teachers consider the weak points of the child Is discussed 
from the point of view of organ Inferiority. The un- 
fortunate trend in academic education to date has been 
to turn the child away from reality. Possible reality in 
the child's school life is comparatively small, although 
the advantages of an early acquaintance with it would 
be invaluable. The school In the distant future may be 
the homes of the people. At present, however, all the 
teacher can do Is to reproduce in the atmosphere created 
by him in the schoolroom as much as possible of the 
quality of reality. An example Is given of how a high- 
school teacher succeeded In reproducing in his classroom 
some of the extra-mural social environment which is not 
found In many schools. 

Some of the specific alms of education from the point 
of view of psychoanalysis are given: to alter the psy- 
chical environment, to amplify consciousness, to remove 



SUMMARY 247 

unconscious fear, to sublimate the unconscious desires. 
The function of the teacher of the future will not be to 
ask questions, but to elicit the mental activity of the 
child, and only incidentally to straighten out misconcep- 
tions with regard to sex. The attitude of the person 
knowing something about the unconscious and not striv- 
ing to know more Is regarded as the Fate or Mother- 
Infant attitude. A greater elasticity will be available In 
the school of the future, whereby a pupil will be enabled 
to take up subjects more in accordance with their suita- 
bility to his stage of mental development. In brief, the 
aims of education including both academic education and 
that outside of schools, are first to separate the child from 
himself, In such way that he can exert his efforts primarily 
to effect a change upon the world of external reality, 
which Is Indeed the best way in which to effect a change 
upon himself; to transmute physical energy Into psychical 
energy, which is much more mobile and productive, a 
phase of which constitutes sublimation; to unite con- 
sciousness and the unconscious, thereby producing the 
most vigorous personality, making everything he does 
most Intensely personal. The net result of all these aims 
will be the uniting of the child again with reality, but in 
a different sense from that in which he was united with 
reality at birth. It is pointed out in various places how 
the conscious education fails to unite the parts of the 
individual personality. 



CHAPTER VII 

RESISTANCE AND TRANSFERENCE 

The attitude of children toward their school work is 
an index both of conscious and of unconscious wishes. 
Some children are unduly downcast by failure to do pass- 
ing work, and some are unduly unmoved by their fail- 
ures. Some have enough density of psychical epidermis, 
so to speak, instinctively to make due allowance for the 
unconscious conflicts in the teacher's own personality, and 
to avoid being disturbed by what the teacher says, and 
also to take advantage of the teacher's unconscious con- 
flicts. In the latter case the pupil takes a pleasure in 
making the teacher unhappy, just as he naturally takes 
pleasure in playing on the emotions of his elders at home 
and of the chance acquaintances of the street. The street 
person, however, he treats with a certain amount of 
wariness because the unknown may contain unpleasant 
surprises in the way of powerful opposition or control. 
At home he has the advantage of knowing the peculiari- 
ties of his relatives, and he can pull the same old strings 
repeatedly with great success, while in school he has the 
advantage of being shielded by numbers, and of being 
able to act in a concerted attack upon the enemy repre- 
sentative of authority. This is the normal unconscious 
attitude of the not over-sadistic healthy individual, and 
is determined by his unconscious wishes. 

The child, on the other hand, who takes school too 

248 



RESISTANCE AND TRANSFERENCE 249 

seriously, who spends many hours on the preparation of 
his lessons, even if they are hard, is one who has not 
learned the chief or at least one of the chief lessons which 
one learns at the present-day school — namely, the art of 
discounting the apparent requirements of the environ- 
ment. For teachers are constantly setting tasks which 
cannot be well performed by the majority of pupils, work- 
ing as they do against the great resistances which are in- 
evitable in all school work. These resistances are un- 
known even to the children themselves. The children 
think they want to learn and will honestly say that they 
want to learn, but as a matter of pure " brass tacks " 
nobody wants to learn from another person, even from 
a professional teacher. The greater the authority with 
which the teacher is invested, the greater will be the 
unconscious resistance, naturally and normally, against it. 
And as the authority with which the teacher is upholstered 
increases his magnitude in his own eyes, and gives a pro- 
found satisfaction to one of his strongest, but still un- 
conscious, wishes, his acts in the classroom inevitably 
tend toward the assertion of authority and to the idea 
that his aim is to impress upon the pupil from without 
a body of information which will increase his (the pupil's) 
efficiency ultimately and give him power and authority. 
If the teacher is not keenly aware that he is feeding on 
unconscious desire in making the pupils do what he thinks 
they should, he runs the very great risk of giving too 
great an emphasis to the authoritative element in his 
teaching. 



>^' 



250 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Authoritative Attitude of Teachers 

Another very great Incentive to the teacher to be- 
come authoritative is due to the fact that, in a sphere in 
which the pupils are not particularly interested, their own 
unconscious makes them see many difficulties and they 
crave guidance and assistance. This may seem to con- 
tradict the statement that they instinctively resist au- 
thority, but it is really no contradiction. For the au- 
thority which they resist is the one that requires them 
to attend to subjects which do not primarily appeal to 
their instincts. The very existence of a curriculum and a 
time-table and a programme and the ringing of bells, 
which always interrupt when interest is finally aroused, the 
very nature of requirement itself is one that creates uncon- 
scious resistance which is shown in tardiness, in absence, 
both physical manifestations, and also in inattention, which 
Is the psychical manifestation of unconscious resistance. 

One Result of Resistance 

A condition which results from this unconscious resist- 
ance Is that it is practically impossible to tell anybody 
anything, chiefly for the reason that the act of telling 
Implies a superiority on the part of the teller, which has 
to be admitted by the listener, and this the listener's un- 
conscious is quite unable to admit. The only way in 
which a concrete result can be obtained — a result In which 
there is any dynamic factor having an influence on the 
actions of the person here called listener — Is the indirect 
method of turning the listener himself into a teller, a 
process which seems completely to reverse the main prin- 



THE TRUE QUESTION 251 

ciples of education as they are generally practised. The 
teacher then ostensibly becomes the learner and the pupil 
gives information. 



The True Question 

The art of teaching, then, consists in following the So- 
cratic " maieutic " method of developing or '^ deliver- 
ing " the thoughts, and by means of them the actions, of 
the pupil, who all along is to be assured that he is im- 
parting information * which the teacher is sincerely 
desirous of knowing. And it does not take so great a 
transformation, after all, on the part of the teacher, to 
make him feel that, by listening to the conscious thoughts 
of the pupil, he can soon gain a leverage on the pupil's un- 
conscious thoughts, after he has discovered what they are 
by a survey of their manifestations in conscious thought 
and action. In this way he can influence the pupil with- 
out the pupil's knowing it, an influence which we know to 
be all the more potent the less aware of it the pupil is. 

* I do not refer to information about history or English literature or 
French or Spanish or mathematics. I do not hesitate to assert the in- 
sincerity of the statement " Now I want to know " or " I want you to tell 
me about " this or that topic in the school curriculum is an insincerity 
which is always immediately sensed by the pupil, and absolutely vitiates 
any educational value that this form of encounter between teacher and 
pupil is supposed to have. But in saying that the teacher is to receive in- 
formation from the pupil, I mean information about the pupil's own 
self, the conscious elements of which will to the skilful teacher inevitably 
reveal the existence and form of the unconscious elements of which the 
pupil himself has not the remotest knowledge. In this way school and 
college education will take a step in the direction of real penetrating 
analysis. It cannot become a thorough analysis, for the reason that there 
will not be time enough for it, but it will, if it goes any distance at all, 
on that line, be an infinite advance over anything that is being done today 
in schools. One step is infinitely greater than no step at all. 



252 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

An important corollary of this principle that it is im- 
possible to tell anybody anything (except in the case 
where so simple and impersonal a question is asked as 
" What time is it? " or " What was the thermometer at 
three this afternoon?") is in the evident futility of the 
teacher doing much talking, an unfortunate practice which 
is very prevalent in schools. The unconscious of the child 
is soothed, by the hypnotic monotony of the teacher's 
voice, into an inattentive and dreamy state most con- 
ducive to pure undirected thinking or phantasying. The 
unconscious of the teacher is enormously gratified by the 
sense of power which is given him by his fluent speech 
evidencing his mastery of his " subject." In the schools 
of the future the subject will have to be changed for the 
object^ the child. Then the child will become fluent and 
from observation of the teacher may himself learn when 
to hold his own tongue. 

One reason why the simple question as to matter of 
fact, e.g. concerning the actual time, gives the oppor- 
tunity to tell a person something is that the question con- 
tains comparatively much, and the answer contains com- 
paratively little, of the personal element — the unconscious 
element, the wish element. When I want to know the 
time, I really do not care who tells me, provided I get 
reasonably correct information from a person reasonably 
willing to give it. The amount of wish-energy put forth 
and satisfied by the person who has the watch or can see 
the clock, is almost infinitesimal under ordinary condi- 
tions. A glance and a couple of words and his perform- 
ance is complete, except if he be infantile — either a 
child or a child-minded adult. If he is a small boy with 
his first watch, he may develop a large amount of wish- 



THE TRUE ANSWER 253 

energy In connection with his answer, or If It Is a girl 
who has any interest in our actions. But ordinarily this 
piece of human relationship is marked by a large amount 
of wish-energy in the one person and a very small amount 
in the other. 

I take this to be a type of the relation which should 
exist between teacher and pupil. In it the person asking 
the time represents the pupil and the owner of the time- 
piece the teacher. But I observe that the relation be- 
tween pupil and teacher is generally quite the reverse. 
The teacher, and particularly one who is " full of his 
subject," will talk by the hour, putting his material year 
by year Into a more highly organized form and becoming 
a better and better expositor or " putter-forth." In all 
of this progress In his own intellectual development he 
does not in the least degree reach his students better. He 
does nothing but increase his own fluency, and in any 
grade of education below the university, increase the 
breadth of his own knowledge. 

The True Answer 

Education on the contrary should be more a matter of 
extraction from the pupil than exposition by the teacher. 
The pupil must himself acquire the knowledge. Knowl- 
edge exposed by the teacher is but knowledge, and, as 
we all know only too well, extensively unrelated to the 
wish-energy of the pupil. Knowledge acquired by the 
pupil's efforts Is wisdom, but no knowledge Is acquired 
from a source too energetic. One cannot get a drink 
from a high-pressure fire hose, no matter how thirsty 
one Is. 



y^ 



k^ 



254 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

A true teacher therefore Is necessarily one who can 
give the brief and impersonal answer of the person tell- 
ing the time, and freed entirely from any wish-energy 
applied directly to the act of imparting information. But 
so insidiously does the teacher's unconscious control his 
actions that he is constantly, and in ignorance of the true 
state of affairs, satisfying, before the audience of his 
classroom, the desire for self-exploitation, a very natural 
one to be sure, and characterizing all persons but most 
profitable to society only In professional entertainers. 

If the ideal education is to consist of a drawing out 
of the powers of the child with the aim of having him de- 
vote those energies to effecting a change, not In himself, 
but in the external world, the question arises of the means 
and the method for developing in the child the desire to 
work upon that portion of the external world chosen by 
the framers of the curriculum. For children do not In- 
stinctively give up the undirected thinking (day-dreaming 
or phantasying) which Is the easy, because internal, man- 
ner of satisfying their unconscious wishes, and substitute 
for it the mode of thinking directed toward the world of 
reality, which Is a difficult mode because it requires an 
effort physically expended upon the reality of the world 
external to himself. 

This applies most closely, of course, to the abstract 
and so-called cultural subjects In the curriculum. If we 
are to have the student really satisfying a real desire in 
getting an education, that desire must be satisfied not only 
at the end of a part of It as when he receives a school 
diploma or a college or university degree, but must be sat- 
isfied moment by moment during the progress of his work. 
Every bit of Information he gets from the teacher 



TENSION AND RELAXATION 255 

must be gotten for the purpose of satisfying a bit of 
desire, and we know how Infrequently that Is the case in 
the schools of the present, where the teacher, called also 
instructor (or he that piles upon), is largely a task- 
master or slave driver, necessarily on account of the de- 
mands of the syllabus. 

It is absolutely necessary that the information must 
be, for Its best effect upon the soul of the student, gotten 
in the heat of desire, for only then is it fused so that Y 
it becomes a vital part of his unconscious mentality. ' 

There Is no doubt that every Impression made upon any 
sentient being Is retained forever. All the lessons and 
tasks of school, all the lectures and essays of college 
are permanently stored in the unconscious, but they have 
never been vitalized because they were passively received, 
and not actively acquired. This is clear when we reflect 
that the rhythm of tension and relaxation, which con- 
stitutes the actual dynamics of psychical life, is the funda- 
mental mechanism by which the psyche develops, exactly 
as metabolism is a rhythm of anabolism and catabolism 
in animal physiology. 

Constant Tension and Relaxation 

The unconscious tensions or wishes of the human in- 
dividual are from minute to minute relaxed and tensed. 
This rhythm of tension or wish and relaxation or grati- 
fication goes on from moment to moment In the mental 
(as well as in the physical) life of each one of us. It is 
going on with the regularity, if not with the rapidity, of 
the heart beat. In every child In every classroom. In 
those students who get the most out of their school educa- 



256 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

tion the desire and its gratification are centred in the sub- 
ject-matter of the course they are pursuing or else in the 
attitude of themselves to their teachers or in that of their 
teachers to them. Such students, dubbed grinds by 
others, are not always the best men and women. Very 
frequently they are a great disappointment after they 
have graduated, and can succeed in life only as per- 
petuators of the same system of education in which they 
were brought up. They become teachers themselves 
(who ever heard of a successful teacher who felt con- 
tempt for the subject he was teaching?) and they strive 
to put their pupils through the same pattern which 
stamped themselves. Having been themselves stencilled, 
they naturally think everybody else ought to be stencilled, 
and with the same shapes. 

But there are others whose instincts or unconscious 
wishes cannot be satisfied with the material which is of- 
fered them in the schools. Why they cannot remains a 
problem yet to be discussed. With book geography, with 
spelling, with English compositions, Latin, algebra and 
what not, they cannot ally their unconscious wishes. 
Their conscious wishes they do so afUliate with the educa- 
tional topics selected for them by their elders, and they 
pretend to a desire for book learning partly because of 
the social status given to it. 

But during every minute of their existence in any edu- 
cational institution, just as much as when they are out 
of it, all students are forming and satisfying desires, un- 
conscious ones mainly. And the rhythm of tension and 
relaxation, of desire and gratification, goes on constantly. 
It expresses the most vital factor in the life of the in- 
dividual. Those who say (and show) that they have no 



TENSION AND RELAXATION 257 

conscious desires, the listless ones, are the ones whose 
desires are all unconscious, either repressed or not yet 
manifested. All people however constantly have desire, 
and whether It Is conscious or unconscious depends 
largely upon their environment. If their surroundings 
have been such as to repress their Instinctive desires that 
have emerged from time to time (Johnny mustn't do 
THAT!) and they have not been able to substitute ac- 
ceptable desires and gratifications for the prohibited 
ones, then the desires are mostly unconscious and the in- 
dividuals so hampered are more or less in the condition 
of manacled slaves, or imprisoned felons. What Is the 
history of the vital rhythm of desire and satisfaction, of 
wish and fulfilment In these persons? 

Let it be remembered that as a wish Is actually a 
material physical tension In muscles of the living human 
body and as only the relaxation of the tension is the satis- 
faction of that wish. It Is a physical impossibility that 
any wish should remain ungratified. In other words 
every human desire is thus always being fulfilled In one 
way or another. There Is no tension which during life 
is not relaxed, to make way for another tension, just 
as there is no life consisting of pure inactivity or ab- 
solute relaxation. Even in a hibernating animal, changes 
take place which are manifested on his reappearance in 
the spring. The absolutely relaxed is actually dead. 

If every human wish Is fulfilled in some way, it Is quite 
evident that If it is not consciously fulfilled it must be un- 
consciously. The unconscious of each and every Individ- 
ual is an unlimited store of material for wish fulfilment. 
The very act of relaxation, even that coming through 
fatigue, is a fulfilment of a wish in so far as it Is the 



258 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

relaxation of a tension. And as the tensions will relax, 
even though the Intended gratification Is not actually se- 
cured, we find ourselves, possessed as we are with a 
faculty of mental reproduction of sensations, deriving 
our satisfactions from Ideal, Imaginary Internal sources, 
Instead of the external ones which have disappointed us. 
That Is what takes place every day In every school- 
room. The unconscious wishes of the child, denied an 
actual external gratification, Inevitably seek and find an 
Internal one. That Is what Is going on before your eyes, 
Mr. and Miss Teacher and Mr. and Mrs. Parent, every 
day of your life. For the solution of the problem of 
what to do with and even how to get hold of the un- 
conscious wishes of the student has not up to the 
present time had any light thrown on It. In fact, the 
problem as such has not been presented at all. Educa- 
tion has treated the student as a being all conscious and 
no part unconscious. In so doing It has disregarded the 
most essential point and Its problems so far have been 
merely superficial and the solutions nugatory. 

Teachers Commonly Ignorant of JVish Rhythm 

This, then, is the real problem of education. If we are 
to educate, we must know what we have to educate. If 
we are ourselves going to effect a result on a part of 
external reality (our pupils), we have to know something 
about It. As educators we seem to have had the Idea that 
we wanted a child's pale face to be red or green, and to 
have laid on thick coats of red paint or green, and to have 
wondered why they did not sink into and become a part 
of his tissue, not knowing that the only way to give him 



IGNORANCE OF WISH RHYTHM 259 

red cheeks is to let him exercise his own muscles. We 
thought his face was pale ! Possibly the paleness was in 
our own vision. Healthy children, not ahgned and rigidi- 
fied by school furniture, are red-cheeked anyway. If we 
are to help Nature we must know something about her. 
If we wish, and think we have a right, to change human 
nature, we must know it as anatomists know the human 
body, as osteologists, as histologists, as cytologists. We 
must have a more accurate knowledge of psychical ana- 
tomy and histology. There is such a knowledge, the 
beginnings of which took place at the end of the nine- 
teenth century and which is making great advances today. 
As teachers we must learn and avail ourselves of the 
mechanisms of the unconscious mentality. We shall not 
feel the necessity of learning about them, if we do not 
know their existence, but, once our attention is called 
to them, we cannot fail to see them, as they are always 
there, functioning before our eyes. They have been vis- 
ible but unseen forever, like any other obvious thing such 
as the air, whose chemical constituents are not an object 
of visual sensation and can never become so, but whose 
existence is a necessary postulate of chemical science, in 
explaining phenomena which are visible. Similarly we 
explain by things inaudible those which are audible, and 
in general we explain and understand the perceptible by 
means of things imperceptible. Thus do we explain con- 
scious thought and act by means of the unconscious and 
its modes of functioning, which are, to be sure, somewhat 
different from the conscious, and have to be learned just^ 
as conscious processes can be learned (the various arts), 
but they are, although different, yet subject to the same 
natural laws as conscious mental processes. 



26o THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

If some knowledge is necessary for a physician to set 
a broken limb, surely as much knowledge as possible is 
advantageous for the teacher to set or reduce a broken 
disposition. In school children most broken dispositions 
are broken before they come to school and the teacher's 
duty, hitherto conceived to be but the dressing up of 
broken limbs in silks and laces, which only serve to dis- 
guise deformities, is really to strip off, at present to 
ignore, what uncouth sartorial integuments he finds on 
his pupils and pay sole attention to the reshaping of their 
badly deformed mental physique. 

If as teachers we were required to know nothing ex- 
cept the nature of the veneer we attempt to apply, we 
should neither be interested in, nor know of the existence 
of, the bodies over which we plastered our thin films. 
But the moment we begin to believe that our concern is 
with the organism, whose color only, so to speak, we 
were formerly interested in, we become mental physicians 
instead of mental tailors. 

Blindness of Humanity to Inner Wish Life 

It will be admitted that humanity has been ostensibly 
more interested in the coverings of the body than in the 
body itself, and that just as it required a thousand years, 
more or less, for physicians as a profession to have any 
social position, so it will require some time for a teacher 
who knows as much about the mind as a medical man 
does about the body to gain repute for his knowledge 
and honor for his profession. There has always been as 
much disinclination on the part of humanity In general to 
have the real nature of its soul examined as there has 



BLINDNESS TO INNER WISH LIFE 261 

been reluctance on the part of individual humans to have 
their bodies investigated. There is so-called modesty and 
fear in both cases. Knowledge, and particularly self- 
knowledge, has been too terrible for most minds. Many 
persons would be as unwilling to look into their own 
minds as into their own brain fissures, and possibly for 
the majority of people either of these is quite unnecessary. 
But for the teacher, who is to act in some sort anal- 
ogously to the physician, a knowledge of, and an ability 
to see the undraped workings of the mind is a necessity. 

That the educator has not had this intimate knowledge 
has not been his fault, for until lately nobody has had it. 
Until the time of the psychology of the unconscious wish, 
originated by Sigmund Freud and the different schools 
which have already developed in more or less divergent 
lines from his teachings, the unconscious, as a medium 
over which some control could be exercised by conscious 
effort, had been neither recognized nor investigated. It 
is Freud's use of his knowledge of the unconscious In 
the cure of hysteria and some other nervous diseases 
which has been extended from abnormal to normal psy- 
chology and has given a point of view from which much 
more can be learned of the human psyche than ever be- 
fore. 

Now we are beginning to have this vast and unex- 
plored mental hinterland (to use H. G. Wells' expres- 
sion) provisionally charted, we are able to look forward 
to a time when its inconceivably vast treasures will be 
available for more and more persons. Educators should 
be among the first to explore this hinterland as the physio- 
graphical conditions of It so constantly affect the climate 
of the coastal consciousness. Furthermore, human enter- 



262 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

prise is gradually more and more opening up this hinter- 
land of the mind, whose geological strata have been laid 
down during the eons of time during which consciousness 
has evolved out of inanimate matter. 

Every teacher is aware, while facing a roomful of 
lively children, that he is " up against " a collection of 
wills, but now the knowledge comes that these variegated 
volitions are not merely conscious purposes, but are un- 
conscious wishes and that all of them are being fulfilled 
continuously in his very presence. There are no disap- 
pointments and frustrations except the conscious ones. 
Every unconscious wish struggles up toward the surface 
of consciousness, and if repressed or inhibited, as most 
of them are, by the teacher, they are immediately satis- 
fied in the unconscious either by a perceptible movement 
or by a thought. The substitute satisfaction is always 
taken in place of the one originally intended. We desire 
to breathe air. If we are put in situations where we 
breathe gas or chloroform or ether or water, breathing 
movements go on just the same as long as the organism 
lives. The satisfaction of the unconscious wish is just 
as instinctive and inevitable as that. 

The marks made with knives and pencils on school 
furniture or walls, the drawings and irrelevant words on 
the pages of school-books, the dog's-ears, the blots, the 
numerous traces of activity misdirected are all evidences 
of the substitute satisfactions of the unconscious wishes 
working through the conscious ones. The uneasiness, the 
antagonism, the slamming of books and occasional drop- 
ping of things on the floor, the surreptitious eating of 
a bite of lunch and the chewing of gum are all attempts of 
the unconscious to gain its own satisfaction in spite of the 



BLINDNESS TO INNER WISH LIFE 263 

restrictions put upon it by consciousness. The conscious 
wrangling of pupils with each other, and, where possible, 
with the teacher, are manifestations of the unconscious 
wish, sometimes a wish to exhibit, sometimes a generic 
wish for power. The attitude of mild or severe dislike 
of lessons or the apparent indifference, all these more un- 
desirable expressions are expressions of the same uncon- 
scious. 

There are desirable ones too. Every cheerful compli- 
ance on the part of the learner with the suggestions of 
the director of the learning, every thoughtful act of ser- 
vice done by the pupil for the teacher or the school is 
quite as much prompted by the unconscious as are the 
bad ones. I do not wish to give the unconscious an unduly 
black eye. By virtue of its enormous and unfailing power 
it can suggest and carry out really magnificent deeds, 
when at the same time its love of exhibition and mastery 
can be satisfied in doing them. The quickness with which 
the most unruly boys will rise to fine action in an emer- 
gency, the alacrity with which a nation goes to war, show 
the unconscious and the conscious life working together. 

The actions of young people are mere impulsive than 
those of older people because, as the older psychology 
would say, they are more instinctive and less reasoned. 
The newer psychology finds that instinct is the expression*'' ! 
of the unconscious wishes and that they may sometimes 
in one action be at variance with reason and at other times 
in other actions coincide with reason. But this coincidence 
is rarer In youth than in later life and the actions of the 
young are therefore more " scatter-brained " and have 
less congruence with a social system than those of per- 
sons who have spent half a century or so in repressing, 



264 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

and finding, by the trial and error method, substitute 
satisfactions. 



Unconscious Wishes Expressed in Idle Questions 

Other examples of the unconscious wish fulfilment that 
IS taking place every minute of every hour in the school- 
room are the foolish or perverse questions which are con- 
tinually asked. I do not refer specially to the oft- 
repeated question: "What was / doing?", although the 
form of it shows the unconscious unwillingness on the part 
of the pupil to judge his own acts according to the con- 
ventional standards of the school. I refer here not to 
the questions which are asked about what page of the 
book the lesson is, or another kind of question which 
shows not a real difficulty and a desire to overcome it, a 
variety of question which is asked not in the recitation 
time but at the end of the school day or in a study period. 
I refer to a kind of question which, though ostensibly a 
sincere question for the purpose of gaining information, is 
asked for one or the other of two reasons. First, a child 
will ask a question designed to get the teacher started on 
a lecture during which most of the class may read some 
story book or magazine or look out of the window. The 
real nature of such a question is that of a protective mea- 
sure, to keep the teacher from asking questions. The 
second is on the face of it absolutely sincere and even 
may be asked of the teacher privately, but nevertheless is 
a sign of resistance against instruction. The pupil is him- 
self in this case unaware of his own resistance to taking 
knowledge in the place of getting wisdom. He really 
thinks he has a difficulty and sincerely feels that he desires 



WISHES IN IDLE QUESTIONS 265 

to overcome It. But a little analysis will show that It 
contains a wish to put the burden of the work on the 
teacher Instead of shouldering It himself. 

This produces an unsatisfactory situation; for the 
teacher knows that to tell him what he consciously wants 
will not strengthen him but weaken him, and at the same 
time that to show him that his difficulty Is one of his own 
making and unconscious wishing will put before him a 
conflict In which he will be quite unwilling to engage. 
Here, of course, the artless teacher, not reading the un- 
conscious element of the pupil's situation, will give a long 
and painstaking explanation. The pupil will be gratified 
by seeing the teacher work so hard for him, but will not, 
of course, realize that the teacher Is doing all the work 
and himself none, and, when a similar problem occurs 
again, the pupil will be little If any better able to solve It 
than he was at first. He will give It up then as a bad 
job, conclude that he has a special unfitness for that kind 
of problem and will hate It forever after, for he has. In 
his unconscious, come In close comparison with one who 
could do It a great deal better, and evidently took plea- 
sure In demonstrating this power, while the pupil himself 
was Inactive and unable to do a triumphant piece of work 
with It. His unconscious Is tortured with a feeling of Im- 
potence and of envy of the teacher's superiority. If only 
a teacher's unconscious would let the teacher say some- 
times that the teacher did not know ! There might then 
be aroused a real emulation on the pupil's part to find 
out for himself. 

The skilful teacher, on the other hand, will find out 
what are the real reasons for the pupil's being unable to 
fight out this battle for himself. His being unable to do 



266 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

it is of course not a true statement of fact. There are 

/no students, or at most only a very few, who are really 

unable to do the work even of the wooden and senseless 

curricula now prevalent in schools. The inability is only 

J fancied or phantasied, that is, wished for. The pupil 
really does not want to do that kind of work. He does 
not himself know that he does not wish it. The wish in 
most of these cases is an utterly unconscious wish. There 
may be even, and frequently is, a very strong compen- 
satory conscious wish to do the work, or at any rate to 
get the reward for having done it, but interest in the work 
itself there is none. 

When I say that the inability to do the work is only 
fancied, that is, wished for, I am implying a general 
identity between ideas and wishes.* There is in some 
pupils a strong masochistic tendency (see page 98) which 
leads them unconsciously to make themselves as miserable 
as possible over anything hard, being led thereto possibly 
by one or other masochistic parent, who takes pleasure 

, similarly in bewailing the misery of human existence. 

^ ^'The masochistic pupil will always look for and find diffi- 
culties and injustice where there is really none. He wants 
to be miserable, unconsciously of course, and finds ample 
opportunity in school. 

* In general there is an absolute identity between a wish and an idea 
in one direction only. All ideas are wishes, but all wishes are not ideas. 
Perhaps it would be better to say that all ideas are the conscious ele- 
ments of unconscious wishes, or that there is an unconscious wish as the 
cause of every idea which comes into one's head. Ideas of misfortune are 
no exception to this rule. That the wish is the father of the thought 
means just this: that no thought would occur to the mind that did not 
gain from the wish the motive power that drives it into consciousness. 
The very existence of an idea in one's mind is proof positive that there 
is a strong unconscious wish at the bottom of it. The idea would not 
have been vitalized, so to speak, without the dynamic force of the wish 
it contains. 



RESISTANCE IN THE CLASSROOM 267 

Resistance in the Classroom 

The phenomena of resistance to authority are seen In 
the actions of both teachers and children in school. The 
teachers forget the directions of the principal and the 
children forget the teachers' words, not only the com- 
mands, but also the words of instruction. This forgetting 
of the teachers' words on the part of the pupil is not be- 
cause of any inherent inability to remember them, be- 
cause retentiveness as a material quality is uniform in all 
persons, but because of the inherent nature of the rela- 
tion between pupil and teacher. The teacher, due partly 
to the compulsory education law, where that Is In opera- 
tion, stands in a false relation to the pupil, i.e. a relation 
which arouses all the unconscious antagonism of the 
pupil. And that Is why the problems of interest and at- 
tention and discipline are so puzzling. It is partly be- 
cause the pupil does things all the time, prompted by the 
Instinctive unconscious, and the teacher, with the usual 
rhetorical questions, asks Why have you done this? as 
If the teacher thought that the pupil could answer this 
question. It Is perhaps a sincere thought on the part of 
some Inexperienced and unreflecting teachers, but others 
must realize that the question is not really a legitimat . 
one; not that there is no answer to It, but because the 
answer Is Impossible for all pupils and for most teachers. 

The best attitude for the teacher to take is that which 
frankly implies that a certain number of acts have to be 
done, with the appearance of having to be done under 
authority at the command of a person who is supposed 
to be In authority. 

How resistance against self-knowledge obscures the 



268 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

judgment is illustrated by the following confession of a 
male high school teacher concerning the real causes of his 
giving more than the usual amount of attention to two 
girls, attractive, but not good students : 

" On my way home from school after a seance with 
Miss X I reflected that I had possibly tried too openly 
to arouse her enthusiasm for her Latin, because her phys- 
ical attractions had made such a reaction on my own 
unconscious. I had also taken the trouble to look up an- 
other very pretty girl to reprimand her for some irregu- 
larity in her classroom behaviour. I saw in these two facts 
the working of my unconscious desires and recalled that 
I had rationalized my acts at the time, giving as a reason 
for summoning Miss Y to my room not her pretty face 
with light hair and brown eyes, but the fact that she had 
given her place card to a boy to hand in and had gone 
up half a dozen points in so doing. I saw, as I walked 
home, the unconscious motives of both acts — the warming 
up about Latin with the one girl and the authoritative 
inquisition in the case of the other — and I realized as 
never before that I had been completely dominated in 
my choice of actions by virtually sexual motives. Further- 
more, as I saw, after I had left the school building, that 
I would have given the wrong reason (had I been asked 
while I was doing those acts), instead of the true cause, 
so I realized that no person can possibly give the true 
cause for his acts, because it is hidden from him, and be- 
cause, during the act, when he is most conscious of what 
he is doing, he is most unconscious of the real causes of 
what he is doing and so of the true significance of his acts. 
What, then, is the real meaning of any act? A real knowl- 
edge of one's unconscious can come only through a second 



RESISTANCE IN THE MARKET 269 

person or from a second consideration of the act by the 
same person when he is in a different frame of mind, and 
is in a sense a different personality. The side lights on 
one's own character afforded by the remarks of another 
person, or even by the later study of one's own acts at a 
time removed from the heat of action, necessarily meet 
with a resistance directly in proportion to their truth, 
which must be painful and therefore repelled." 

Resistance in the Market 

Another illustration of resistance is that of having a 
smaller coin returned in change under and obscured by, a 
larger one, so that when one looks in one's hand one sees 
only the larger one, and, missing the smaller one neces- 
sary to make up the amount, one begins to suspect less 
change is being handed out than is due. This is a very 
prettily disguised bit of resistance on the part of the 
person making the change, because the change is all there 
and the salesman is just waiting for the purchaser to make 
an objection, which of course will be senseless. This will 
give the salesman a situation of superiority or at any rate 
that kind of superiority which comes from being wronged 
or unjustly accused by another. His remark to the pur- 
chaser will imply that the latter did not examine the 
change with sufficient care, certainly not with as much care 
as the change was arranged by the salesman. In that re- 
spect the salesman was truly the more careful and, in the 
detail of care, superior, and he gets much the same grati- 
fication out of the situation as he would out of any mild 
practical joke. All practical jokes hinge upon the sudden 
emergence of a situation in which the perpetrator is mo- 



270 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

mentarily the superior, and " gets the laugh on '' the 
other. But in the concealed coin " short change " trick 
above mentioned the resistance is very much covered but 
consists in the fact that it is a source of satisfaction to the 
salesman, who frequently in this episode is some small 
proprietor, even to appear for a short time, to give out 
less money than he should. Naturally he wishes to give 
back no change at all, but failing of this satisfaction, he 
unconsciously takes the next thing to it and gives for a 
moment the impression, both to himself and to the cus- 
tomer, that he is holding on to his money. The practical 
joke element of this incident is, of course, perfectly con- 
scious. The salesman thinks that is all he wants, but 
fails to see the unconscious satisfaction taken by him out 
of the fact of the apparently retained money. 

Transference as Identification 

One of the ways in which identification works out is in 
the unconscious identification of a present personal re- 
lation with a past one. The individual behaves toward 
some person in his environment as he did toward his 
father or mother or their surrogate in his early youth. 
Roughly speaking this is expressed by saying that the 
school stands in loco parentis to the child. But the un- 
conscious reaction to the parent in this relation has never 
been considered. That the school has taken up some of 
the functions of the parent is supplemented on the child's 
part by his unconsciously behaving toward the school, and 
more specifically toward the teacher, as he unconsciously 
behaved toward the parent. Thus an unfortunate home 
life, beginning even in the first year, will produce in the 



TRANSFERENCE MEANS OF INFLUENCE 271 

child either a rebellious, or a cowed, or a clingingly de- 
pendent attitude, for instance, which will be unconsciously 
and inevitably transferred to the teacher as the first per- 
son with whom he comes in close contact after father 
or mother. The transference is one of unconscious be- 
haviour, and explains many of the child's reactions to 
teacher and, even at a later date, to some of his school- 
mates. If the parent has been one of those who do 
everything for the child, thus interfering with his inde- 
pendence of action, it is quite likely that the same actions 
will be looked for from the teacher, who will find it most 
difficult to get any independent work done. If again the 
parent situation at home has contained an aggressive 
domineering father, it is quite possible either that the 
child, if a boy, will reproduce, through identification of 
himself with the father, the aggressive attitude toward 
the woman teacher, or the subdued and sullen attitude 
toward a strong man teacher. In any case the behaviour 
of the child in school is a replica of that in the early 
home, or of the early influences. 

Transference as a Means of Influence 

This transference, however, which, it must be re- 
membered, is absolutely unknown to the child, is the 
means by which the well-informed teacher can exercise 
the greatest good influence over the pupil. It will not 
be placed consciously before the pupil until the adoles- 
cent period is well under way, but, although it is some- 
thing of which the younger pupil should never become 
aware, it should be consciously and systematically planned 
by the teacher, for it is his strongest card, not only to get 



272 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

efficiency in the petty details of school work, but also to 
exercise that much more benign influence which will give 
the pupil sureness and confidence in his behaviour toward 
reality in the years to come. 

For the parent situation which tends to fix at an in- 
credibly early age a pattern of behaviour in the child, the 
teacher is not, of course, in the least responsible. The 
parent situation, on the other hand, rather increases his 
opportunities for doing good, for, by means of the newer 
psychology, the teacher may acquire the power of con- 
sciously reducing this spiritual fracture and at the end of 
the course returning the child to the world much better 
equipped to meet its contingencies, though the pupil may 
never know it, than the school authorities or the state 
could ever expect. 

A Wrangling Boy 

As an Illustration I might take a boy who lost his 
father at an early age and evidenced in the classroom a 
tendency to fly off the track at every opportunity. This 
was due not alone to the natural resistance to authority 
and to the accomplishment of work, for he had great 
ability, but was due to the habit he had unconsciously and 
blamelessly formed, of arguing with his mother. The 
teacher was at first dragged off the track and wrangled 
verbally with the boy, and then suddenly realized that 
he was himself reacting as the mother would have reacted 
In the same situation, and that here was a boy who had 
never had the opportunity of seeing how a rational man 
would behave toward a difficulty. The teacher then got 
control of the situation simply by refusing to follow the 



TRANSFERENCE THE CRUX 273 

belligerent suggestions contained In the boy's unconscious 
attitude, and by showing him that there was no question 
of authority but merely one of the use of the boy's own 
very excellent abilities from which he could get a much 
greater satisfaction than from the discussion of essen- 
tially irrelevant topics with the teacher. 

The Teacher's Transference 

This Illustration shows both the teacher's instinctive 
suggestibility to the attitudes of the children, which was 
fortunately overcome by the teacher's reflection about 
his own actions with the boy, and the fact that, without 
the deeper insight which the newer psychology gives into 
the unconscious behaviour of the pupil, the teacher might 
have been led far astray from the goal of education. It 
also shows that there Is, in some teachers, at least, a trans- 
ference of behaviour-pattern from the teacher's own home 
influence to the pupils in the classroom. Some teachers, 
in other words, are behaving toward their classes or to 
individual pupils In the modes to which they, the 
teachers, were initiated in their own Infancy. Surely such 
teachers, at least, need the conscious attitude which the 
newer psychology can give, in place of that which they are 
unwittingly manifesting in their own reactions to the 
school environment. 

Transference the Crux 

The topic of transference is one of the most, if not 
the most, vitally Important in the whole of the newer 
psychology. It is possible to give here only the merest 



274 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

sketch of its many applications not only in school but 
everywhere in human life. By a slight understanding of 
it teachers are immeasurably better able to interpret the 
otherwise frequently incomprehensible acts of children 
and adults, and themselves to react in a manner infinitely 
more serviceable to society than by blindly allowing their 
own transferences toward the children to control their 
teaching. But when it is realized how absolutely uncon- 
scious is this modelling of present behaviour on forms 
which were well fixed in infancy, it will be seen how im- 
possible it is really to influence another soul unwittingly 
for its own good, without taking into consideration the 
unconscious elements of the general situation. 

Any situation of human relationship contains, as I hope 
will be clearly seen by this time, elements of unconscious 
behaviour which practically control it and make It quite 
evident that all pupils and most teachers do not know 
what they are doing most of the time. Only by taking 
account of the unconscious element can they know all 
they are actually doing. Frink * has given a very clear 
explanation and Holt t one possibly still more apposite 
to the present topic, of the individual's unconsciousness 
of what he is really doing. Frink cites the Instance of 
the retriever dog and how he is trained not to injure 
with his mouth the birds he retrieves, by means of giving 
him a bird stuck full of outward projecting pins. The 
dog mouths these very gently, and ever after retrieves 
as if he were carrying birds containing pins. The prob- 
lem of analyzing out the transference element In be- 
haviour of humans Is to find, and in the case of adults 

* Morbid Fears and Compulsions, page 508. 
t r^^ Freudian Wish, page 87. 



NEGATIVE TRANSFERENCE 275 

get them to find out themselves, what are the '' phantoms 
of past pins " to which they are reacting unawares. 



'' Phantoms of Past Pins '' 

If the teacher finds this out in the case of the pupil, 
he can act accordingly, without the pupil's knowing the 
significance of this action, and use the " pin phantoms " 
to improve his own work with the pupils. The realiza- 
tion of what are the " past pins," whose phantoms are 
such potent realities in his life, produces in the adult who 
is so fortunate as to discover them a truly rational reac- 
tion to the world of external reality which will remove 
most of his difficulties and enable him to use his entire 
force upon the world, unhampered by internal uncon- 
scious conflict. The dog was supposedly unaware that 
he was acting as if all the later birds were stuffed full of 
pins. We are all acting as if all the time, and the prob- 
lem is to find out " as if " what. The solution of this 
problem is, I believe, possible for teachers. It is im- 
possible for pupils, but unnecessary, if the teachers are 
themselves analytical enough to unravel their own past 
lives and unsnarl the children's for them, giving them 
only the net results in the shape of a new reaction pat- 
tern, which will help and not impede their progress. 

Negative Transference 

The concept of a negative transference is found to ac- 
count for a marked hostility of the pupil to the teacher. 
In large schools with many classes of the same grade it 
is customary for a pupil who " can't get on " with one 



276 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

teacher, to be handed over to another. The process is 
sometimes repeated several times, with the final effect of 
branding the pupil as incorrigible, if he does not succeed 
in finding an agreeable teacher. This of course is a tech- 
nical error and a loss of opportunity on the part of 
the first teacher who found the pupil impossible — a make- 
shift which allows a very interesting problem to go 
utterly unsolved. For the negative transference can, by 
the proper means, be readily changed into a positive trans- 
ference in which the pupil's whole attitude toward life 
is likely to change for the better. 

Transference and Resistance 

As the concept of negative transference might by some 
persons be taken as one of the manifestations of resist- 
ance, it is necessary here to show the true relations be- 
tween them. A negative transference, being an uncon- 
scious hostility to the person to whom the transference 
of the infantile pattern of behaviour takes place, remains 
nevertheless a transference. The expression of the emo- 
tional phase of it, however, is, by virtue of the ambi- 
valent quality of emotion as such, invested in a negative 
form. This will seem contradictory to some persons, so 
I might illustrate from other sources. An artist is some- 
times quite as pleased with a great deal of adverse criti- 
cism of his performance as with a small amount of favour- 
able comment. Whether the comments are favourable or 
otherwise does not make so much difference as the fact 
that the performance causes a great deal of comment, 
which means that a great many people are much inter- 
ested in it, or that their attention is compelled. Similarly 



TRANSFERENCE AND RESISTANCE 277 

of the child who Is forced by an unconscious attraction to 
devote a great deal of attention to a teacher. The form 
that this attention takes is not as important as the fact 
of it. It may be wheedling, teasing, fawning, distant ad- 
miration or downright animosity. If the form it takes 
is displeasing to the teacher. It can be changed if the 
teacher knows how to do it. But in all these instances 
I am Illustrating a transference to the teacher of an af- 
fection which once belonged to the parent exclusively. 
Resistance Is the only barrier to the outgoing of the 
soul to other persons and things and is based on Inhibi- 
tions and fears. It is, like the other mechanisms, mostly 
unconscious, although it enters consciousness occasionally 
in the form of positive dislikes, the most patent form of 
resistance. Its latent forms may be inferred from many 
actions the characteristic trait of which is some defect. 
For instance, the absolutely Innocent forgetting to do a 
school task, to comply with a request, even to think of 
doing a favour. In a certain sense no defective perform- 
ance Is absolutely innocent, on account of the resistance 
to doing a perfect performance, and we can hardly excuse 
the resistance. The very fact of Its not occurring to the 
bridegroom, for Instance, to take the wedding ring from 
the chiffonier and put it in his pocket, when he started 
for the church to marry the girl of his choice is an al- 
most unmistakable indication of an unconscious resistance 
to marrying her. Not a single thing that we leave un- 
done, except through sheer lack of time In an absolutely 
crowded life, is other than an indication of a resistance 
on our part against doing the very things we forget to 
do, or find insuperable difficulty or any distaste or dis- 
inclination whatever in doing. 



278 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

This, then, shows the difference between transference 
and resistance. In some instances the pupil has no resist- 
ance against the teacher. He is only too anxious 
to plague. He has a transference for her, but it Is 
a negative one. If he had the same degree of resistance 
against her that Is Indicated by the transference, he would 
forget her and her commands and requests, and his mind 
would be entirely engrossed in something else. She 
would be ignored. So any teacher can look around the 
classroom and make her inferences as to which pupils 
have positive or negative transferences for her and what 
others have merely a resistance against her. The latter 
will be the hardest to influence for their own good. In 
fact, some children are so brought up that they have a 
resistance against almost anything, particularly In school. 
The extreme degree of resistance renders the child in- 
educable. 

Of course It may work out that a child has a resist- 
ance against doing a specific thing which happens to be 
the contrary of an act which would show a positive trans- 
ference. For Instance, a child does what he is told by his 
teacher, but gets it all wrong or, out of spite, does ex- 
actly the opposite of what he is told to do. Such an 
act should not be called a resistance. This negativism is 
the same as that seen In some insane patients who, when 
told to hold out the hand, will put It behind the back/ 
They act Immediately upon a suggestion, but negatively 
Instead of affirmatively. Nevertheless they respond. 
In the schoolroom the lack of response shows the resist- 
ance, and it is the teacher's greatest problem how to re- 
move it. 



EDUCATIONAL ANALYSIS 279 

Medical and Educational Analysts 

In the medical analysis used in the cure of nervous 
diseases the general resistance of the patient is effectually 
removed only by getting him to talk. Some practitioners 
believe indeed that the successful removal of the resist- 
ance perfects the cure, and that no cure is complete with- 
out the reduction of resistance to the minimum. In short, 
there is no topic which the patient should feel unwilling 
to discuss with the physician. A statement quite parallel 
to this could be made about the resistance of the child 
to the school environment. It will be found, in the school 
life of the child who shows a greater resistance than the 
average, that there is some thought which has occupied 
his mind to the exclusion of other thoughts and prevented 
the most helpful thoughts from being operative. In 
medical analysis the thoughts most obstructive are those 
which concern some thing which the patient has done 
and about which his conscience troubles him. It is safe 
to say the same thing about the resistant child in school, 
and also to say that the secret sin of the child can much 
more readily be confessed and much more easily con- 
doned than that of the adult. But as it is the object of 
medical analysis to free the spirit manacled as it is with 
the inhibitions imposed upon it by a guilty conscience, 
so it is the object of educational analysis to release a 
spirit struggling against some obstruction which nine 
times out of ten is purely subjective or fancied. The 
resistance of the child against the details of the educa- 
tional plan is based on his inhibitions, his fears. He 
fears that he may fail, that he may not get satisfaction 
and what not, and his fear, and thus his inhibition, should 



28o THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

be removed so that he may get on a path where he may 
go ahead full speed without thought of error or harm. 

The prospect of the teacher being able to free an im- 
prisoned soul is a very inspiring one — almost as inspir- 
ing as the prospect of saving a lost one. But until today 
the way of doing this liberating work has not been thor- 
oughly understood. In this of all times when most of 
the nations of the world are at war in the interests of 
political liberty, it is a proud thought for the teacher that 
he, too, although not privileged to taste of the consum- 
mate excitement of a life in the trenches, is nevertheless 
privileged to wage a war for freedom in every school- 
room in the land — the freedom of the human spirit from 
irrationality which is worse than ignorance. And just as 
the present war has developed new engines of destruction 
and a military organization embracing the entire world, 
so the most modern warfare of the spirit requires the 
help of the latest psychological discoveries, among which 
the one that stands out pre-eminent is that of the uncon- 
scious mental activity. 

Summary 

The attitude of the child toward work shows a per- 
fectly natural resistance which is partly due to the au- 
thoritative manner of teachers. This produces on the 
part of the child an inability to express himself which in 
turn has developed a habit in the teacher of asking end- 
less questions, whose insincerity prevents their being truly 
answered. The nature of a true question and a true an- 
swer is outlined. Teachers' questions are continued in 
spite of the fact that when the child fails to understand, 



SUMMARY 281 

his mind does not stop working, but proceeds to make and 
satisfy wishes in unremitting rhythm, of which the teacher 
is quite unaware, just as humanity in general is un- 
aware of the unconscious wish-life of all Individuals. Ex- 
amples are given of the constant satisfaction of uncon- 
scious wishes by means of apparently senseless acts in 
school, both by mutilation of school property and by 
asking idle questions. 

Other examples of resistance In the schoolroom are 
given, and one of resistance in the market. The trans- 
ference of an attitude of the child from that maintained 
toward the parent to that maintained toward the teacher 
is described and examples are given, both of this trans- 
ference and that of the teacher toward the pupil. Nega- 
tive transference is distinguished from resistance. The 
relation between medical and academic analysis is noted. 



CHAPTER VIII 

EMOTION 

An emotion Is the conscious or unconscious physical 
reaction to a stimulus which may be Itself either conscious 
or unconscious. In one sense, then, we are having emo- 
tions all the time. But the further delimitation of emo- 
tions In order to separate them from sensations of the 
familiar " five '' senses and the unfamiliar senses of 
weight, pressure, temperature, motion, etc., must Include 
the specification that they are the mental reaction to a 
stimulus which is In the Individual organism. The mental 
element, which Is necessary to separate emotions from 
the purely physiological conditions which are continuous 
during the life of the body, has to be further qualified 
by saying that the emotions are not only a mental re- 
action to a stimulus which is In the body, but that the 
usually accepted emotions are those sensations which are 
most closely associated with the ego. In other words 
there are many sensations which come Into consciousness, 
from the body, just as there are many sensations which 
are of too small a degree of intensity to enter conscious- 
ness, and these would be included in a definition which 
embraced all sensations of stimuli which were of internal 
origin. 

I think that much would be gained by Including all such 
stimuli, but then it would be hard to say anything about 
them or make any good Inductions regarding them on ac- 

28a 



REPRESSED EMOTIONS 283 

count of Indefiniteness. So, principally for the purpose 
of talking about what other people have meant when 
they speak of emotions, we have to cut out of the strict 
definition all those reactions to stimuli which are both of 
an unconscious origin and themselves of an unconscious 
nature, although we know that there must be such re- 
actions to such stimuli taking place in the individual all 
the time. 

Repressed Emotions 

Furthermore we have learned in recent years that there 
are repressed or buried emotions that have an important 
effect upon the health of the individual, and that only 
academically can they not themselves be called emotions. 
There is no accepted name for them, and psychoanalysts 
have been forced to adopt a mode of description of them 
which declares that while there cannot be such a thing 
as an unconscious emotion, that is, an emotion consist- 
ing of the unconscious reaction to a stimulus which is 
either conscious or unconscious, and that therefore every 
emotion is by definition conscious, the actual original emo- 
tion of which the present emotion is but the substitute 
has not ceased to exist. 

Thus, if a person has loved another and that emotion 
has turned to hate, the emotion called by the restrictive 
name love has ceased to exist, but this is quite analogous 
to saying that if a person has started to walk north and 
then changes his direction and goes south, then the direc- 
tion of north has ceased to exist although the action of 
walking still continues. The emotion of hate may be the 
reverse direction of, love, and yet the emotion may, as 
a unit which represents the original unit, persist. 



284 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Constant Quantity of Emotion 

We have come to the conclusion that the unconscious 
craving for love, life and activity is constant in quantity, 
and that whenever it seems to disappear from the human 
consciousness it has not really gone out of existence but 
has, like a train entering a tunnel, merely disappeared 
from consciousness for a time. We therefore regard 
emotion as we regard the perennial vital urge, namely as 
continuous; and varying only in the degree in which it 
appears in consciousness. Just as we have desire all the 
time, we have emotion all the time, only some of it mo- 
mentarily disappears from our consciousness to appear 
again at some later date. 

What seems to make it necessary, in order to be con- 
sistent, that we should speak only of conscious emotion 
is the undoubted fact that we are never angry, for in- 
stance, at nothing.* When we are angry we are always 
angry at something, and that something changes from 
one thing to another. This condition we describe by say- 
ing that the ideational content of the emotion changes. 
This is not merely saying that when we are in good con- 
dition, physically, we think of now one thing and now 
another to be happy at. It means, on the contrary, that 
a flood of emotion, once released upon one idea or group 
of ideas, may meet with social opposition and become 
dissociated from those particular ideas. That does not 
mean, however, that the flood of emotion has been 
dammed entirely without outl'et, for such a circumstance 
is as unthinkable as that any of the laws of physics should 

* " In sooth I know not why I am so sad " may be spoken sincerely, 
but such a remark always denies the sadness or conceals its real cause. 



CONSTANT QUANTITY OF EMOTION 285 

all of a sudden be abrogated. But it means that the emo- 
tion once associated with one idea becomes associated 
with another. A similar displacement is seen in the 
sadism which (see page 89) has been repressed in its 
natural original direction of pleasure at inflicting cruelty 
to the direction of taking pleasure in having cruelty in- 
flicted on self, or the other direction of preventing cruelty 
from being inflicted by other persons upon still others, 
where we have the anti-vivisectionists, and those devoting 
a great deal of energy to the prevention of cruelty to 
children and to animals. 

From these considerations we infer that emotion is a 
natural state of the organism, and that like respiration 
and the circulation of the blood, it is variable only in its 
incidence, by which I mean that just as the actual quantity 
of the blood is the same, amounts of it supplied to the 
brain, the muscles of the arms and legs, the stomach and 
the intestines are different at different times according 
to the exigencies of the organism, so the emotions are, or 
I would better say, emotion is, a constant quantity, but 
that it is, as it were, supplied to different ideas in dif- 
ferent amounts at different times. 

To carry the analogy a step further, if too much blood 
is taken by the muscles at a time when there is food in 
the stomach, digestion is delayed or made imperfect in 
some way. In this we come very near home, because it 
is well known that emotions, which exercise a deep in- 
fluence upon the blood supply, will have the same effect 
upon digestion. Some may say that I am arguing that 
circulation is emotion. In a sense it is so, for both are 
but forms of motion of the particles making up the body. 
Circulation is sometimes " read off " into consciousness 



'U 



V 



286 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

and sometimes emotion is. Possibly It would be true to 
say that all physiological motion Is read by consciousness 
now as circulation, now as sensation of the " five senses/' 
and now as emotion. Here too the question of amount 
enters, for It is quite clear that a strong emotion so fills 
consciousness that there Is room for little else and we 
do things of which we are not In the slightest degree 
aware. 

So It adds to consistency of thought and logicalness of 
reasoning to regard all states of mind as conscious only 
In the degree in which they can, so to speak, be " read." 
That they are not read by the individual at any given 
time Is no reason why we should have to regard them as 
non-existent. It might be clarifying to speak of a unitary 
vitality " which comes into consciousness now as love, 
now as hate, now as the perception that the heart is beat- 
ing violently, now as the perception that respiration is 
heavy, now as a pain in the intestines, now as a feeling 
of happiness and so on. This would be quite congruent 
with the principle which Is taken as the fundamental 
hypothesis of psychoanalysis, namely, that the desire 
for life, love and activity is constant but subject to 
periodical obscuration, nevertheless continuing as long 
as the Individual Is alive. 

But to return to the consideration of the emotions as 
such. The modern way of looking at them from the 
analytical point of view shows us things about them which 
at first sight seem quite contradictory. We hesitate to 
accept the psychoanalyst's dictum that militant suffragism 
Is but the unconscious desire of the suffragette to be con- 
trolled by, and not to control, not men but a man, that the 
lynchings and the chivalry of the Southern States are not 



CONSTANT QUANTITY OF EMOTION 287 

a desire so much to prevent outrage but to enjoy outrage. 
We might go to the extreme of saying that war is but 
an indulgence, in the part of every participator, of his 
propensity to inflict cruelty, but it would be unwise at 
the present time. Accustomed as we are to think in 
traditional modes of thought, we tend to object when we 
hear that self-sacrifice is only a disguised form of the 
desire to inflict cruelty upon others, transformed as it 
is Into a desire to inflict cruelty on self, that love for 
women is a form of selfishness which differs only in de- 
gree from the love of anything else, and that emotions 
are but a kind of sensation differing in quality as does 
blue from the tone of a bell or from an actual pain of a 
cut finger. 

If emotion is a form of human activity which is called 
emotions only when it is reported to consciousness through 
certain nerves that do not bring reports from outside of 
the body, and if the laws of this activity can be learned, 
then we shall certainly be in a position to act much more 
intelligently toward it in the classroom, in the home and 
in the world of business. William James put his theory 
of the emotions epigrammatically in saying that we do 
not cry because we are sorry, but we are sorry because 
we cry, but it certainly seems more sensible to say that 
we are sorry and we cry both for the same underlying 
reason, namely, that an unconscious mental activity is 
*' read off " simultaneously by consciousness in two ways, 
as an emotion and as a flow of tears, just as an orange 
is read off as a colour and a fragrance, a touch, or a taste. 

When the temperature of a metal is raised to a certain 
degree it gives off heat which is perceived by the sense 
of heat which is in the skin and mucous membrane. When 



288 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

It Is raised to a sufficiently greater degree, it gives off 
light which Is perceived by the eye. In a manner quite 
parallel to this we can say that when desire is raised to 
a certain degree it gives off emotion, and when raised 
to a sufficiently greater degree it gives off action.* Just 
as the metal when emitting light emits heat at the same 
time, so the soul when sufficiently stimulated gives off 
both action and emotion at the same time. It is not so 
very different if we say that just as heat is a mode of mo- 
tion, so action and emotion are modes of motion, and 
the heat is a quality of both the material metal and the 
material animal body. On this analogy emotion becomes 
heat and action light, which puts the two in the accepted 
relation of value. Emotion in a person is metaphorically 
spoken of as heat, and as light is more valuable to society 
than heat, so is action more valuable than mere feeling. 
The social value of the action comes from its outward 
direction, and the comparatively smaller value of emo- 
tion comes from the fact of its inward direction. An 
emotion is a perception of something which is caused by 
an internal stimulus, and absorption of the mind in the 
emotions Is an inward turning of the attention which if 
carried too far causes that form of introversion which 
leads to various kinds of mental morbidness. 



Error of Extreme Idealism 

An earlier philosophy chose to regard all experiences 
as they come through the avenues of sense as indistin- 

* There we see temperamental differences in people because people 
melt or glow or boil or vaporize at different temperatures, the very re- 
served (^repressed) requiring the higher temperature. 



ERROR OF EXTREME IDEALISM 289 

gulshable in the point from which they come. An 
extreme idealism would therefore look at every incoming 
sensation as merely incoming, and no matter how far it 
came, allowing no degrees of distance, making no distinc- 
tion between impressions coming from the body itself 
and from the external world outside of the body. It 
was as if a person should sit and view the world through 
two panes of equally transparent glass. If there were 
nothing between those two panes of glass, such a manner 
of looking at the world would have no defect. But if 
there were a mass of animal tissue between the inner and 
the outer pane, which changed every ray of light coming 
from the world outside of the outer pane, it would make 
a great difference in one's reactions to the body between 
the panes and to the world of reality outside of the outer 
pane. To say that there was no difference in the ap- 
pearance of the world viewed through the two panes is 
not the same thing as saying that no person can see the 
world without looking through them and what is be- 
tween them. Of course he has to look through both and 
he has to infer that everybody else has to do the same 
thing. But a very practical result follows from the ne- 
cessity of seeing through. If we delude ourselves into 
thinking that we can never see what is really there, out- 
side of the two panes, we might just as well say that 
we cannot touch except by means of a jointed stick, 
which goes through the panes, the world which is outside 
of the outer one, and therefore there is no use in trying 
to act at all. Such a way of thinking virtually says: 
*' Let us be content to stay in our glass case, for we shall 
never be able to go outside of it and wreak our strength 
on the real world which is out there," 



290 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

The emotions are the things which nature has placed 
between the two panes of glass through which we have to 
see the world. Sometimes the emotions are cloudy and 
almost totally obscure the vision of things as they are, 
and sometimes they are as clear as any air and then we 
rightly think that we see things as nearly as they are as it 
is possible. But there has been little of value offered us 
by philosophy to enable us to clear the space of the 
cloudiness of the emotions or to maintain the bright 
golden hue which they sometimes impart to the world. 

I have purposely chosen the figure of the two panes of 
glass to show its inadequacy. It is the view of an old 
and out-of-date philosophy. Put the entire human or- 
ganism between the two panes, then take the two panes 
away, and what is the relation of the ego to the body 
and to the world? The ego is the body in every particle 
of its tissue and the world is external to it. There is no 
other way of looking at it. There is no difference be- 
tween my self and my body, no difference between myself 
and my body and my mind. All are three ways of look- 
ing at the same thing. 

The World as Part of the Body 

But the opposite extreme of looking at the world as a 
part of the body is the way every infant begins his ex- 
perience of life. He makes no distinction between the 
world outside of his body and that inside of his body, 
with the gradually beginning exception that he thinks 
all things which are painful are outside of and those that 
are pleasant are inside of his body. It is shown elsewhere 
in this volume how that innate tendency results in a habit 



ANGER A SELF-CASTIGATION ^91 

of externalizing all unpleasant things throughout life and 
forms the mechanism of projection (page 118). But here 
I wish to emphasize the fact that the emotions are all 
sensations which do really emanate from within the body. 
Anger and fear are just as little a kind of stimulus com- 
ing from outside the body as are pain in the stomach or 
in a tooth, but both anger and fear are instinctively given 
an outward reference. 

The paleontology of the emotions as we might call the 
analytic study of these mind activities, has shown that 
before there were any emotions there were only motions 
in the sense that a person in prehistoric times, if de- 
prived of food by some other person, would not become 
angry at that person but would kill him, or get rid of 
him in some other way. Anger was first experienced by 
that prehistoric ancestor who was prevented from killing 
the other fellow and had to have some outlet for his 
activity. If he was held fast, say by some of his fellows, 
so that he should not kill the aggressor, who might have 
been a good warrior and consequently valuable to the 
tribe, he would have to bottle up his activities entirely 
or struggle with his captors until his desire for activity 
had waned. If in the long run he swallowed his wrath, 
his activity was spent on his own body. Probably he 
maimed himself, in lieu of the aggressor, actually tore 
his own hair and scratched his own cheeks, beat his breast 
or what not. 

Anger a Self-Castigation 

Nowadays the emotion of anger is nothing but a self- 
castigation which is practised by persons who feel ag- 



292 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

grieved. It is practised on themselves because society, 
which is so infinitely stronger than it was, in those good 
old days when there were no Ten Commandments, has 
put a ban on doing those very retributive actions for which 
the instinct so loudly calls. So the modern individual, 
when attacked in one form or another, represses his rage, 
which is exactly equivalent to satisfying it on himself. 
Thus it is that anger is literally an " unfought fight." 
It is literally unfought in the external world only; it is 
literally fought in the body of the angered person. With 
weapons lying in his own body he slashes parts of his own 
body and does not see the extent of the damage. He 
only knows that he himself has been damaged, but what 
part of him and how he can have no knowledge. He 
attributes the damage, however, to the person who, he 
thinks, has injured him. He may have actually been 
wounded, and, had he been able to wound his enemy, he 
would not have given himself the internal gashes. There 
would have been two maimed men. Society gains, then, 
by restricting the damages to fifty per cent, of what they 
might have been and is thereby a great gainer in one way. 
But the man is the loser, because he has turned into a 
psychical wound what might have been merely a physical 
wound, and in modern times the psychical wound may be 
the worse. But society as a whole has not up to the pres- 
ent time been able to see that the mental is worse than 
the physical wound. Perhaps it is not. I shall not at- 
tempt to say. 

I think, however, that I have illustrated what I wish 
to say about emotion. Not only is it a sensation of what 
goes on in the body, which might not have to be confined 
to the body if society had not put a ban on its being let 



LOVE AN UNACTED CARESS 293 

out, but it is a sensation of a motion taking place in the 
body of which the individual has no other information 
than through analysis. He looks upon it as a strong 
feeling indefinitely located (or universally located all 
over his body), to which, however irrationally, he at- 
tributes an external origin. He thinks that the aggressor 
made him angry, or that the acts of the aggressor did so. 
But it is manifestly not the case. The aggressor did some- 
thing to which there would have been a similar retri- 
butive action had not society restrained it. 

Love an Unacted Caress 

I have used anger as the illustration because the con- 
sistent carrying out of the retributive action would not 
so shock the sensibilities of the reader as if I had used 
love, which is so much more shocking than anger. If 
I should say that the emotion of love is but an unacted 
caress I should have been quite as logical. The aggres- 
sor of the preceding illustration becomes the lover in this, 
and so inconsistent is human nature that I should be con- 
sidered too suggestive if I carried out the parallel any 
further. 

We can be more detailed in illustrating the emotion of 
hope. According to the more modern view hope would 
be the unacted act of any description, the unseen sight, 
the unheard melody, all accompanied by a more or less 
strong desire. And as the unacted or unperformed act 
is really a performed act, but performed only within the 
organism and never let out into the external world of 
reality, it is quite plain not only that hope deferred 
maketh the heart sick but that it also makes the body sick 



294 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

as well, because it is but ungratified desire, or desire for 
outward experience gratified actually but gratified on the 
body of the desiderant. 

Applying the same test to the emotion of sorrow we 
find it to be an unperformed wrong or an unacted tragedy. 
From this point of view one cannot sorrow long, ration- 
ally, because one realizes that an indulgence in sorrow 
for any length of time is but a rehearsing of the tragic, 
an acting of tragic scenes in our own ego. The element 
of desire is here quite as inevitable as everywhere else 
in human mental activity. If we sorrow for long, it is 
only because we have a desire to be sorrowful. It may 
be because we have a desire for the misfortune to over- 
whelm some other, the misfortune indeed for which we 
say we are sorry. 

Naturally we should all wish to be joyful, and the 
emotion of joy, from the newer point of view, is but 
the enacting in the internal world of the body the acts 
which have been really acted or which we desire to act. 
It is evident how futile is joy of the second type, that en- 
acted internally and projected into the future. If we 
give ourselves up to this kind of joy we become happy 
but introverted idle dreamers. 

In all these illustrations we see the two elements of in- 
ternally acted acts and of desire. But normal desire 
always is for externalization of activities. It is necessary 
for the organism perpetually to be taking things into 
itself from the outside and perpetually to be acting upon 
the outside world. Presumably the man of most con- 
tinuous action most consistently externalizes all his acts 
and therefore has less emotion and less need for emotion 
than the inactive person. But this brings up the thought 



EDUCATION OF FEELINGS 295 

that there are many who are continuously active and who 
do not do the things which they most desire. In this case, 
of course, there is a conflict between what such a man 
wishes to do and what he does, and the conflict not only 
results in the detriment to what he is actually doing, be- 
cause he is not doing it with all his heart, — that is, with 
all his desire; that is, with his whole body, — but it also 
results In the doing of what he wants to do at the same 
time but the doing of it in an internal manner. We all 
know how many clerks and other employees are doing 
one thing and dreaming about another, to the infinite 
harm of their work. We do not, and they do not, see 
the harm they are doing to themselves, but it is evident 
to all persons who think beneath the surface. 

Education of Feelings 

Education of the feelings, up to the present time 
neglected in favour of education of the intellect and to 
a less degree of the will, has been ignored partly from 
conscious and partly from unconscious causes. The con- 
scious reason why the education of the feelings has been 
sidetracked is because it has appeared that the feelings 
do not play so important a part as the intellect in the 
practical work of the world. It is now seen that for a 
continually increasing number of persons (neurotics) the 
feelings play a part in their lives so important as to make 
them unable to perform their normal amount of work in 
the world. It is found that in these people the emotions 
of pleasure and displeasure, and the more dynamic pas- 
sions of love and hate, are, by a twist that is primarily 
intellectual, transferred from ideas to which they really 



296 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

belong to other ideas which are not appropriate. It must 
be remembered that there is no feeling which is not at- 
tached to some idea, and while there are ideas which have 
no emotional tone, there is no emotional tone which does 
not belong to some idea. It is more or less like shadows 
and reflections. There is no shadow or reflection that 
is not the shadow of some object or the reflection of some 
surface. But there are certainly objects which, in the 
absence of light, throw no shadow, and surfaces which, 
because of their nature, can reflect no light. 

The most recent psychological investigations have 
established the fact that a curious and very important 
transfer takes place between ideas and emotions. An 
emotion such as grief is felt first at the loss of a friend 
or relative or lover, and when it has become, or if it does 
become, too painful, it is repressed into the unconscious, 
that is, the idea or occurrence which originally caused 
the grief is repressed and the grief is attached to some 
other idea. One reasons somewhat as follows: This 
thought, of having lost this dear one, is so painful, if I 
could forget ever having known or loved him, it would 
enable me to forget the grief and be happy again. It 
is a fact that the memory of the loved person can be re- 
pressed into the unconscious, but if the organic basis of 
the emotion of grief is deeply enough founded in the 
system, the grief itself will immediately be linked up with 
some other occasion, and the individual suffering this 
change is forced to grieve over something else. 

But the effects of grief which, like a scar, persist and 
are attached to some other idea, as if a man should have 
forgotten that his wound was received in a situation dis- 
graceful to himself, and had pretended, and had come 



EDUCATION OF FEELINGS 297 

to believe, that the wound was received in battle while he 
was fighting bravely. 

The effects of grief or anger are not so persistent or 
pervasive as those of love, and a person who has had a 
disappointment in love is suffering from a frustration of 
w^ishes that are fundamental in all humans. The love- 
desires, denied their gratification, continue nevertheless 
and attach themselves inevitably to another object if the 
first one is taken away, and this is the case whether or 
not these same love-desires have or have not been gratified 
before the final denial. In fact it may be said that while 
the wishes which form the core of the affection of love 
may be denied their gratification for days, months and 
even years, there is always a substitute gratification of 
them found in some form or other. If a man cannot 
marry his adored one and possess her fully, he will take 
some compensatory gratification from her caresses which 
convention does permit, and if the engagement is pro- 
longed beyond all practical limits, his desires of full pos- 
session of his fiancee will have to be gratified in some 
substitute form or he will lose his health of body or mind 
or both. 

This substitution of one form of gratification of wishes 
is sometimes conscious. The man knows what he is 
doing when, inflamed by the beauties of his fiancee, he 
satisfies his gross sexuality on other w^omen. But the case 
of women, or very much repressed men, is different. Wo- 
men are brought up almost universally to repress their 
sexuality in its franker forms. And so successful is this 
repression in what we call the most refined women, that 
when their fundamentally sexual wishes do come into 
consciousness, they appear not as sexual wishes but as 



298 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

wishes, desires, trends, bents of character, or keen In- 
terests so disguised as to be absolutely unrecognizable by 
the woman herself. One woman's desire for man's love 
and for maternity was so perfectly repressed that she 
developed a compulsion to take drugs, a feeling so strong 
as to compel her to take them constantly and indiscrim- 
inately, regardless of their nature. The poisons, of 
course, she took in medicinal doses. Her feelings so in- 
tense were transferred from where they really belong 
and where of course they are quite proper, to an idea 
(drugs) about which no such Insatiable desires are 
proper. Her tendency to take drugs was absolutely unac- 
countable to herself and to everyone else until her mental 
life was inquired into analytically, when the real cause 
was found and the Imperativeness of the feeling departed. 

This woman was one of the numberless women who 
as children have had their sexual curiosity snubbed, and 
who have been carefully trained to repress all sexual feel- 
ings on the ground that they are base and disgraceful. 
Such women, in certain circumstances, can substitute other 
sensible and socially useful desires and interests in the 
place of those which their environment has suppressed, 
and can devote the energies which these desires express, 
to ends which bring a wholesome degree of satisfaction, 
to ends which, like that of reproduction, are creative, but 
are creative in other ways, such as art, literature or educa- 
tion. 

But there is as yet no education which takes into ac- 
count in any degree the greatest of all unconscious de- 
sires — the sexual. A half-hearted sort of instruction with 
averted gaze Is given in some schools, and a few parents 
make futile attempts to instruct their children In sex, 



UNCONSCIOUS CAUSE OF NEGLECT 299 

disqualified most of them by the shame they themselves 
feel about admitting the fact that they had and gratified 
sexual desires. 

But how a boy or a girl should feel, much less how 
a man or woman should feel about the things concerning 
which the deepest and most pervasive feelings are right 
and proper, is very rarely considered until it is too late, 
and the sexual feelings which should be kept for sexual 
things, have gotten detached from those primal experi- 
ences and transferred to incidents which never in the 
world should have had attached to them feelings of sex- 
ual intensity. 

In a sense, then, our civilization is based and the vast 
fabric of it is erected on a sense of shame, for repressed 
sexuality works itself out in excesses of every sort, In 
enormousness of cities, and commerce and all the great 
things which so astound the individual when he looks at 
them in large. It may thus be that our shame-civiliza- 
tion has resulted from a shunting off of power from re- 
production of species to production of externals of life 
and that, had we had our sexuality less repressed, we 
should have been a simple people like the Chinese. 

Unconscious Cause of Neglect 

The unconscious reason for neglecting the education 
of the emotions, and for the neglect of the emotions in 
education, is that an emotion, being a purely subjective 
feeling, does not contribute any part to the activity of 
the individual that is directed toward the production of 
a change in external reality, but only contributes to a cer- 
tain degree of Intensity of outward actions. It both di- 



300 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

minlshes their effectualness at times, and at other times 
it increases the force of the outward impetus. But emo- 
tional action, or action largely motivated by emotion, is 
not in the long run as effective as that instigated by pure 
desire for activity, for it is, like emotion itself, most 
variable in its quantity, while the action motivated by the 
unconscious desire is normally — that is, if not blocked — 
continuous. 

The deeper emotions are therefore to be regarded as 
an occasional accompaniment of activity, mental or physi- 
cal, while the general affective tone of well-being or 
malaise, pleasure or displeasure, may be a constant under- 
tone which seldom enters the focus of consciousness. A 
voluntary turning of attention to the emotions accom- 
panying a thought or an action will either cause the emo- 
tion to vanish, or, if it seems to increase it, will do so 
merely by calling up other thoughts or evoking other ac- 
tions associated with that emotion before. Therefore 
the individual who is not studying emotion from a purely 
psychological point of view is really trying in a purely 
introversional manner to use himself as a source of pleas- 
ure. The same is true of those who make efforts to 
maintain an unpleasant emotion. They are using them- 
selves as sources of pleasure, only here they are deriving 
a masochistic pleasure out of the painful emotions. This 
is the condition of women who enjoy going to funerals, 
and crying about many other things. They identify them- 
selves, as do all masochists, with the person who is getting 
pleasure out of the situation, the aggressor, and the en- 
joyment they take in the misery is that of the person in- 
flicting the pain. The more wretched they feel, the more 
they enjoy it. 



UNCONSCIOUS CAUSE OF NEGLECT 301 

It is the same with children who exhibit too much emo- 
tion, as many do at home, about the learning of their 
lessons, and about their performances in the class. If 
a child is angered by being told he has made a mistake, 
or if he shows too much joyous excitement over having 
surpassed a competitor, he is too emotional. The actual 
expression of the emotion is not as significant as the ex- 
istence of it, which the teacher may infer from the child's 
manner. The emotionality of such children is a very 
serious obstacle to their learning that for which they come 
to school. As has been mentioned (page 299), the emo- 
tion which upsets a child and makes him unable to under- 
stand his lesson is in reality a misplaced emotion. It es- 
sentially belongs to the more fundamental desires. It 
would be very advantageous if the teacher could find the 
opportunity to have a quiet talk with such a pupil, and 
find out indirectly, by means of inferences from his state- 
ments about apparently extraneous matters, what is the 
real unconscious thought at the bottom of the emo- 
tion. 

The disproportion between the emotion as evinced by 
the child and that w^hich would be appropriate to the 
situation is evidence enough that the emotion is misplaced. 
Its being misplaced proves that it belongs to an uncon- 
scious thought, and not to the conscious situation. 
The child himself has no knowledge of what the un- 
conscious thought is, and he can never find out for him- 
self. It is also quite unlikely that the teacher, if 
he found it out, could communicate it to the child 
directly. But the good result that w411 come from the 
quiet talk about the apparently extraneous matters is a 
new attitude on the part of each tow^ard the other, partly 



302 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

at least due to their seeing more of each other. The 
child sees that the teacher is more than a mere critic, and 
the teacher that the child is more than a mere pupil. This 
fact alone will reduce the incident that has produced the 
emotion in the child to more nearly its proper proportion. 
If the child could see the incident in its truly normal pro- 
portion, he would not be so emotional over it. The 
emotion comes from placing a really trivial act in the 
position of a great tragedy, which impHes a very narrow 
view of the act. 

As to the extraneous matters mentioned above, I should 
here state that no matters that can be mentioned by the 
child are really so. He cannot talk of any topics which 
are not germane to the situation over which he became 
too emotional, unless the interval between the emotion 
and the quiet talk is so long that the thoughts connected 
with the emotion have time to become completely re- 
pressed. The quiet talk too should be mostly the child's 
and not the teacher's. "A quiet talk" from some teachers' 
point of view is really a long lecture by the teacher on 
the wrong done by the child, his duty toward school and 
parent, and the necessity that such a strong emotion or 
loss of temper should never occur again. This is not at 
all what I mean. On the contrary, the teacher should 
show such an interest in the child's life out of school as 
to lead the child to talk about himself, his likes or dis- 
likes, his hopes or fears, his outside interests, anything 
in fact which will be apparently not connected with the 
emotion in question. I say apparently for the reason 
stated above that nothing that the child can say Is ir- 
relevant, being connected with the incident in question by 
the thoughts in the unconscious, all of which are pushed 



FUNCTION OF THE EMOTIONS 303 

up to consciousness by the same unconscious craving which 
expressed itself in the over-emotionality. 

The question of over-emotionality is important in ' 
many ways. The children who apparently have no emo- 
tions may be supposed to have the unconscious variet}^ 
The absolutely unconscious emotions probably have a 
deleterious effect, so that it would be better to get such 
children to express some emotion openly. This is one 
advantage of athletics in that it lets out emotions in some 
children who may not get the conscious emotion any 
other way. 

Function of the Emotions 

Have the emotions a function and if so, what? If 
they are but the entrance into consciousness of sensations 
having an internal origin, how do they differ from the 
ordinar}\ though not Vvidely known, organic sensations, 
so-called? As listed by current psychology^ the organic 
sensations are those of motion, digestion, including hun- 
ger and thirst, circulation, respiration, sex, and position, 
also pain and pleasure. An emotion is any one of these 
mentally associated, not with anything internal, but always 
with something external or some thought having an ex- 
ternal reference. In one sense an emotion is a pleasure 
or a pain, really having an internal cause but to which 
we attribute an external one. It is thought popularly to 
have an external cause on account of its being mentally 
associated with an external happening. But that does 
not make it really dependent on the external thing. If 
we always boil when we hear certain words we cannot 
truthfully say that the words are the cause of the boil- 
ing even though the two occur regularly together in our 



304 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

experience. For it is notorious that the regularity may 
be broken at any time and subsequently the relations re- 
versed. 

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien 
As to he hated, needs hut to he seen, etc., 



but the fact that this hate may change to love shows that 
there is no causal relation between the situation and the 
emotion. Many other things than vice may arouse at 
first one emotion and later on its opposite. But whether 
the one or the other, the emotion is all the time an in- 
ternal sensation, for which we blame or thank some ex- 
ternal situation or object. If I lose some money, my 
emotions are mentally associated with the money, though 
they emanate from my body. If I see some terrible 
thing, it is terrible to me only by virtue of the bodily re- 
action I unconsciously make to it. This reaction may be 
instinctive or educated, come from instinct or environ- 
ment, from the unconscious as inherited disposition or 
as the result of environment, but it is still a reaction in 
my body and on it, and not a reaction having any immedi- 
ate effect on external reality, though it may be said to 
have a remote effect on something outside of myself. For 
instance, the emotions aroused in me by being struck may 
have the result of making me strike back. 

The expression " arousing emotions " indicates that 
the emotions are ordinarily asleep, that is, in the uncon- 
scious, where possibly they really belong, and are waked 
up and brought into consciousness for the purpose of pre- 
paring us to externalize our mental activity. If this pre- 
paration does what it seems to do, it increases the force 



FUNCTION OF THE EMOTIONS 305 

of the desire, or focusses it upon certain objects, thus 
acting, in a sense, as a magnifying glass in changing the 
relative size or importance of some object in the field of 
vision. So the emotions enlarge the personal value of 
certain objects, and make now one and now another object 
or situation have such qualities for us that it becomes the 
object of our desire. 

The unconscious craving always tends outward, but its 
natural extraversion is for the purpose of getting its own 
internal satisfactions. What definite things can satisfy it 
is settled only by the manner In which the body reacts to 
those things. Two main varieties in type of bodily reac- 
tion to external stimuli may be called dilation and contrac- 
tion. Dilation Is expanding to take in, read off by conscious- 
ness as pleasurable emotions, and contraction Is shrink- 
ing, which has the same effect both of expelling what has 
been taken in and reducing the number of the individual's 
points of contact with the rest of the world. But the 
psyche can expand in one direction and contract in 
another, both at the same time. Thus come pleasurable 
emotions connected with one object and unpleasant ones 
with another. The fact that we may have opposite emo- 
tions in connection with one and the same thing at dif- 
ferent times accords with the fact that the emotions are 
purely bodily sensations, and not some essential quality 
of the thing. Essential qualities of things are quite dif- 
ferent in this respect from the emotional aura through 
which we perceive them. Stones are Invariably hard and 
standing water Is invariably yielding, and their qualities 
are constant for all normal persons. But the emotions 
aroused by Plymouth Rock or New York Harbour are 
different for different people, simply because the people 



3o6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

are different. Thus It is that those who do not perceive 
that stones are hard and water is liquid are called idiots 
and those who do not thrill at the sight of historic 
stones or waters are not. The former perceptions 
cannot be taught; the emotions can be and always 
are. 

Emotionality of the individual can be diverted from its 
original connection with the nutritive and reproductive 
craving (where it serves the purposes of self-preserva- 
tion and race preservation respectively), and directed to- 
ward quite different activities. In fact emotion Is the 
best, If not the only, means of disengaging the libido 
temporarily from Its natural animal object and trans- 
ferring it to an artificial and human object. Not until 
the magnifying glass of emotion is put before an object 
can It be truly said that the object has any significant ex- 
istence for the Individual. Emotion naturally connected 
by the nutritive and reproductive libido with certain ob- 
jects is only through education, that Is, artificially, asso- 
ciated with other objects. Then for the first time do 
those objects come Into being for the particular indi- 
vidual. 

Thus It Is evident that the only way in which to cause 
things to exist for the developing mind of the young per- 
son is to Insure their being connected with an emotion 
of the expansive type. If they are by some Inadvertence 
or Ineptness on the part of the teacher allowed to become 
associated with the opposite type of emotion, their pos- 
sible existence is annihilated so far as the particular in- 
dividual is concerned. Being connected with the expan- 
sive (pleasurable) type of emotion Is analogous to a 
situation where the given object would cause In the In- 



FUNCTION OF THE EMOTIONS 307 

dividual a bodily reaction of the dilation or acceptance 
variety, although it cannot be said in any true sense that 
the object is the cause of the emotion. For it is a fact 
that there are few if any instinctive emotions not con- 
nected with the nutritive or reproductive libido. Young 
children have no sense of disgust, for instance, for many 
things which adults have, and those instincts which ap- 
parently connect certain sensations with displeasure, such 
as the sensations from wine and tobacco, are subject, 
through education, to a complete reversal. Wine, which 
was unpleasant, becomes pleasant, and for a great many 
persons milk, which was the most desired object, becomes 
one of the least desired. 

This dirigibility of the emotions, this fact of our being 
able to cause the reactions originally responding to one 
kind of object or situation to respond to another, is what 
makes education possible, because it makes the possibility 
that the second kind of object may have an existence or 
meaning for the individual, a meaning which otherwise, 
that is, without this transfer, would not exist. The trans- 
fer, however, is one of object and not one of response 
to an object. The response is the same, but the object 
is changed. Here the true nature of sublimation emerges 
into view. The two phases of the libido, if they adhered 
constantly to their original objects, the objects with which 
sex and hunger are satisfied, would be the same in humans 
as they are in animals. But humans have the privilege 
of devoting these two phases of the race-preservative and 
self-preservative libido to other objects than those in- 
stinctively suggested by nature, and therefore the privi- 
lege of having more objects in the external world have 
a meaning for them. This meaning or significance is 



3o8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

a widening of intellectual vision through the magnifying 
lens of emotion, and is in effect really an amplification or 
magnification of the individual through purely intellectual 
means. 1 

An Absorbing Interest in School Work 

A child may be and must be taught to take the same 
degree of pleasure in absorbing knowledge of the objects 
of the external world and the relations between them 
that he takes in eating. The nutritive libido must and 
can be engaged upon a sum in addition with the same 
abandon with which it is engaged upon the sucking of a 
lollipop. Where this unity of effort, this focussing of 
the entire libido upon the sum in addition is not secured, 
it is safe to say the emotional magnifying glass has not 
been used by the teacher for the pupil or has been un- 
skilfully used. Mostly the teacher holds the glass up 
before his own eyes and tells the children how large the 
object appears to hiniy not taking the trouble or not being 
mentally capable of finding out whether the glass is in 
front of the child's eyes or not. 

It will require the teacher to have a knowledge of the 
unconscious mental activities of the children, for him to 
know whether the children have any appreciation of the 
meaning of what both teacher and children are saying. 
Many times the child will make what sounds like an in- 
telligent remark and is accepted as such by the teacher. 
The next remark of the child will, if it is made, show 
that he completely misunderstands. Generally, however, 
it is never made, and the teacher loses the chance of mak- 
ing the comparison between the two remarks, a comparl- 



CONTINUANCE OF ACTIVITY 309 

son which alone will reveal the unconscious thought con- 
necting the two remarks. This Is a crucial point. The 
child should desire to make more than one remark about 
the subject, just as he naturally sucks more than once on 
the lollipop. 

Continuance of Activity 

There Is the same unconscious motive possible for the 
continuation of expression in words as there is for the 
continuance of the sucking, but the emotion of pleasure 
has not only not been connected by the teacher with the 
verbal expression, but in most cases It has been discon- 
nected. While the child should desire to continue efforts 
In the intellectual sphere just as he naturally pursues 
activities in the absorbing of candy, he Is prevented solely 
by the conditions of his educational environment, by the 
practically prohibitive attitude of the educational author- 
ities, due to their Ignorance of the mechanisms of the un- 
conscious mental activity. The curriculum Is fixed and 
the syllabus is prescribed and the work of the educational 
leaders is done and cannot be changed. The effect of the 
present academic environment must be Inhlbltive because 
it has produced the present results, comparatively good 
though they may be, for it is Inconceivable that truly ap- 
propriate emotional conditions would not allow the pupil 
to devote as much libido to school work while he Is In 
school as he does to extra-mural work and play while he 
is out of school. 



310 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

Engagement of Libido 

The fact Is that the pupil's libido is not thus engaged. 
In other parts of this book I have tried to show both why 
it is not so engaged and upon what it is engaged, namely 
upon unconscious thoughts and actions, because of the 
virtual prohibition of the connection between the libido 
and conscious activities. In this section I have tried to 
show the means, that is the emotions, which may be used 
for the purpose of connecting the libido with the school 
activities. The school activities, in short, are not and they 
cannot be natural to the child. In lieu of naturalness, 
their artificiality, which Is essential because the very aim 
of education Is in a sense to Improve upon nature, Is one 
which will not be completely successful unless all the 
factors entering into the situation are accounted for. Up 
to date the greatest of all these factors, the unconscious, 
has almost universally, through unavoidable Ignorance, 
been left out of account. 

Education of Emotions 

The question then arises concerning the education of 
the emotions of the child in the school. It Is an undoubted 
fact that many If not most teachers, by their wholesome 
attitude toward the work which Is to be accomplished 
In the school, produce the best atmosphere for the natural 
development of the normal emotions. There Is, In the 
presence of such a teacher, neither too much emotionality 
nor too little. The work Is personal enough, but not too 
personal. The appeal to the individual child Is suffi- 
ciently Intimate, but not too close. But the conscious and 



EDUCATION OF EMOTIONS 311 

systematic treatment of the problems coming up in both 
the home and the school has not been accomplished ac- 
cording to the most modern information about the facts 
of emotion. Indeed it is safe to say that the problem of 
the emotions of the child has not appeared in its present- 
day light in school education at all. To go at the thing 
directly would be most artificial. For of all mental states 
an emotional one is the one which par excellence changes, 
and changes essentially, if attention is bestowed on it. 

The education of the emotions, so useless to attempt 
consciously in the sense of arousing the consciousness of 
the pupil to them, must be done consciously by the teacher 
only. He must be instructed in the indirect means of 
getting the best emotional atmosphere in the pupils and 
without their knowing that they are being led in any direc- 
tion in this field. This applies to pupils under the age 
of adolescence. To those who are passing through the 
adolescent period, some knowledge of the fundamental 
sources of emotion should be imparted. This is the only 
place where conscious efforts on the part of the teacher 
should be made to produce a conscious effect on the pupil. 
How this should be done is a question which cannot be 
answered here for lack of space. I have briefly indicated 
elsewhere (page 185) how some of the questions deeply 
affecting the emotional life of the very young child should 
be answered by the parent. But the emotional effect on 
the child at the time of the occurrence of these questions 
is almost nothing. That on the parent may be very great, 
according to his or her bringing up, but it has been found 
that questions of sex, when left unanswered, or answered 
in the traditional mendacious way, keep coming up again 
and again in the child's mind even to a date much later 



312 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

than Is generally supposed, while the sincere and truth- 
ful answers given by the mother to the very young child 
about the origin of his life have the effect of once and 
for all dismissing any doubts and queries from his mind, 
and he Is enabled to go ahead with the business of his 
child's life without the undue emotionality which Is caused 
by unsatisfied curiosity about sexual matters. 

The Aim in Education of Emotion 

The principal aim In the education of the emotions Is 
to get them placed on the right Ideas. A child that weeps 
about a lesson, whether during Its preparation or after 
Its criticism by the teacher. Is a common example of mis- 
placed emotions. The deep emotions of the child should 
be aroused only about the most vital things. And as the 
most vital things do not normally concern the child, and 
only unconsciously concern him at the age of adolescence, 
the emotional child Is one who has not had the proper 
bringing up at home. A child should not, either, take 
too much pleasure out of the successful achievement of 
his school tasks. If he does, It Implies that things which 
so unduly excite him do so because he has been somehow, 
either at home or In the street, unduly excited sexually. 
For this the teacher Is of course not responsible, but It 
Is the teacher's duty to recognize the fact, and act ac- 
cordingly, which win mean that he should, In cases like 
this, take particular care to avoid excitement of any kind 
in too great Intensity, and endeavour to see that the 
child's life in school shall proceed as equably as possible. 



SELF- ABUSE 313 

Self 'Abuse 

In short, only the milder emotions should be aroused 
in school life. In a sense, therefore, the education of the 
emotions Is not a school affair, except In the matter of 
the more superficial ones. But after the period of adoles- 
cence has set In, the question is one which cannot be ex- 
cluded. In the earlier years of school education, the 
training of the emotions should therefore be negative. 
The traces of major emotions which crop up in school 
should be noted and the child exhibiting them given 
special attention for the purpose of reducing them, as a 
surgeon might reduce a fracture. For an outburst of 
emotionality on the part of a pupil is much like a fracture. 
A bad one is the opportunity for the teacher to go at the 
case consciously with that pupil alone, in order to find 
out the true cause, and by learning of It removing it, 
particularly if it is a case of unsatisfied or wrongly satis- 
fied sexual curiosity, or of masturbation. The latter is 
as natural and inevitable in most children as is the tend- 
ency on their parts to think that they themselves are 
the only ones in the world who have discovered this 
source of gratification, and to think that because of that 
isolation they are outcasts, weaklings and doomed to an 
early death. As it is a known fact that self-abuse is 
common in all children of both sexes and at different 
times from the earliest infancy, and that a great amount 
of later neurosis is due to the false ideas which the chil- 
dren get of its injuriousness, it is particularly important 
for teachers as well as parents to know that the Injury 
received from the indulgence is frequently if not always 
less than that received from the child's brooding over the 



314 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

secret sin, and his generally erroneous Inferences about 
its effects. Such children, if not set straight about this 
matter, either by parents, who very seldom convey the 
correct Information, or by teachers, are the ones In whom 
the major emotions have been Initiated too early and at 
the same time not reduced, as the correct Information 
about this matter generally has the effect of doing. 



Mental Self -Abuse 

While on this topic of self-abuse and the heightened 
emotionality which it produces In the life of the child, 
which some might compare to the lighting of a fire in a 
place not yet prepared for a fire of such magnitude, it 
will be appropriate to call attention of teachers and par- 
ents to the symbolic self-abuse which is existent in all 
over-intense emotionality in children (or adults too, for 
that matter). A great amount of pleasure which chil- 
dren take out of doing some habitual thing, such even as 
eating of candy, and sucking of lollipops, chewing pencils, 
putting hair in mouth, scratching head, stroking hands 
and neck, anything in fact which becomes an accentuated 
mannerism, is likely to be carried on by the pupil for 
the gratification of an unconscious desire which is es- 
sentially masturbatory in its nature. Such children are 
getting pleasure out of themselves, and not, as they 
should, out of external realities. It is very easy, compar- 
atively, to change the habits of children. If allowed to 
go on till after adolescence these habits are very hard to 
break up, and they invariably Indicate a certain degree 
of introversion. Teacher or parent must see to It that 
the child is absorbed not in himself, for he will get satis- 



MENTAL SELF-ABUSE 315 

faction of unconscious desires somehow, but in the world 
of external reality. This Is the problem of the teacher 
and parent with many nervous children. Some of them 
are showing a tendency to become introverted, the bash- 
ful, the diffident, the retiring, the unusually quiet chil- 
dren, the omnivorous readers. They all use their own 
bodies or minds to a certain degree, in lieu of the world 
of external reality. It Is Inevitable that this should occur 
in all persons to a moderate degree; It is only the exces- 
sive or exclusive use of self as the world which demands 
corrective measures at once. 

The use of one's own mind as a world on which to ex- 
pend one's mental energy is, to be sure, far the best form 
of self-abuse, but Is nevertheless undoubtedly a variety of 
mental masturbation. In the ordinary parlance day- 
dreaming is the term applied to this mental activity. In 
the analytical psychology It is called " undirected " think- 
ing or " phantasying." Its essential characteristic is the 
securing of the gratification of unconscious wishes by the 
easiest means, namely on the self. It is the satisfaction 
of the unconscious desire In the instinctive way. It is 
furthered by the reading of light fiction and attendance 
upon light drama. As the word " day-dreaming " in- 
dicates. It Is, like the night dream, the ideal fulfilment 
of the wishes of the unconscious, voluntarily allowing 
whatever thoughts occur to have free play In the mind. 
NaJturally the tendency In some persons Is toward the 
frankly erotic, and in others toward the slightly dis- 
guisedly erotic. 

Every child In every schoolroom who pauses too long 
from the assigned work, and sits rapt in Inward attention, 
Is excluding the external world, which has become irk- 



3i6 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

some, and is retreating into self for the sole purpose 
of gaining a satisfaction which it does not know how 
to secure in the world of external reality. This is the 
teacher's chief concrete problem, then: to show how satis- 
faction can be gained from the world of work, from the 
definite tasks allotted in the schoolroom, and from the 
interplay of personality between pupil and classmate and 
teacher. The pupil's gaze is to be directed outward in- 
stead of inward, and forward instead of backward. 

Forward instead of backward here has a double sense, 
for the pupil, in introverting, as this self ward-directed 
activity is called, is regressing mentally to the age in 
which the satisfactions are normally taken out of self 
and not out of the external world, namely, the age of in- 
fancy. This is not to say that regression is a defect at 
all times, for the most active minds have their normal 
periods of regression; for instance, the noted men who 
occasionally relax in reading dime novels or other cheap 
literature. The universal normal regression is of course 
sleep, where the individual goes back into pre-natal obli- 
vion and opens the door for any kind of phantasy. 

Education of the Will 

From the point of view of the newer psychology there 
is little to be said about the will. I have spoken about 
the battle of wills which takes place occasionally in the 
schoolroom. The same frequently takes place in the 
home between the parent and the child. The fact of two 
human wills opposing each other has an aspect of a de- 
gree of economic folly that is almost pathetic to witness. 
When we multiply this war of individual wills into a war 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL 317 

of nations like tiie present, we see very clearly the un- 
necessary destruction which it causes. But in the single 
struggle between two wills, when it is about the will alone 
and not about something toward which the will is directed, 
when, in short, one will is directed against the other 
will, there is a displacement of libido which is extremely 
unfortunate for humanity as a whole. For of the two 
directions of the individual will — namely, the direction of 
it upon another will or upon a thin^ in external reality — 
there is no question whatever as to the greater advantage 
of directing the will toward things over directing it against 
persons. 

With respect to the education of the will, the newer 
psychology teaches that the will does not have to be 
educated or trained any more than a stream of water or 
a pressure of steam, implying that what is called weak- 
ness of will is really a blocking or damming of the libido 
by the inhibitions caused by the complexes, and that, in- 
stead of training the will, as a weak muscle is strength- 
ened by exercise, the libido has to be liberated and it will 
exert itself to its maximum, like any other unimpeded 
natural force but on socially approved objects. 

Those children in school who appear to have weak 
wills, if they be not of a congenitally weak physical con- 
stitution, have naturally just as strong a will as the most 
assertive and obstinate child, but their will, or more ac- 
curately, their libido, has been blocked by some fear or 
other inhibition, which is caused either by a guilty con- 
science about sexual matters, generally utterly unwar- 
ranted guilty feelings, or by one of the phases of the 
family complex. So it would be particularly happy if, 
through the teacher's knowledge of the unconscious 



3i8 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

wishes, that are working in such a tangled way in the 
hinterland of the pupil's mind, the child's fears could be 
removed and he could be given the confidence to go ahead 
full speed. As a very concrete instance of a parental 
influence operating against school work I might mention 
an almost pathetic child in the first primary grade who 
could not handle a pencil. His father, in order to get 
fun for himself out of Johnny's first day in school, had 
told the boy that he had better look out for the pencil 
because it would bite him, and hence the poor child's ef- 
forts to write were impeded by his thought that he had 
to handle it most gingerly. The inability of most chil- 
dren to do well in any given study is determined entirely 
by the unconscious preconceptions which they have formed 
about the difficulty or impossibility of their being able to 
reach a standard set for them, and not because of any 
" weakness of will " or stupidity in understanding the 
subject. It will be different in different cases. What the 
teacher has before him is generally not a weak will but 
an obstructed will, and it takes an analytical examination 
of the individual pupil to get at the bottom of the trouble 
and remove the obstruction. This cannot be attained 
without the previous establishment of a rapport between 
himself and the pupil, analogous to that existing between 
the physician and the patient in the medical psychoanaly- 
sis. It implies a transference of the right kind on the 
part of the pupil toward the teacher, which cannot be 
produced unless the teacher is able to read below 
the superficial manifestations of the pupil's conscious 
thoughts and acts. 

Here, then, is the teacher's, as well as the parents', real 
opportunity. The thoughtful parent, who has the leisure 



SUMMARY 319 

and the Interest, will occasionally study the unconscious of 
the child, when his or her attention has been called to 
the existence of such a thing. It Is the duty of the 
teacher, and the sole art of teaching, to produce an effect 
upon the pupil without the pupil's knowing how It was 
done. To this end the teacher will have to gain the con- 
fidence of the pupil to the extent of the pupil's telling the 
teacher a great many of his thoughts on subjects ap- 
parently most remote from the subject of study In which 
the pupil appears to be weak In understanding or In will. 
In these talks the child will. In most cases, reveal to the 
discerning teacher acquainted with the mechanisms of 
the unconscious, the real cause of the apparent weakness 
of win, or of the seeming lack of Intelligence. The 
teacher will discover the true reason why the unconscious 
of the child Is unwilling to see or understand, or thinks 
he Is unable to do so, and will be able In many cases to 
throw a bright light Into regions which were for the 
pupil dark before. 

Summary 

Emotion Is described as the perception of a stimulus 
that originates within the body, but which has a closer 
relation than other sensations so originating with the 
apparent desires of the individual. While It originates 
within the organism it is referred outward, as ordinary 
feelings of discomfort are not, and Is associated with 
some more or less definite idea. The existence of re- 
pressed emotions suggests that emotion is a constant 
factor of all mental activities, which appears in con- 
sciousness with greater or less Intensity according to cir- 
cumstances. Emotion is likened to a coloured medium 



320 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

through which the external realities are perceived. Ex- 
treme idealism regards even the external world as a 
part of the ego. Anger is shown to be a form of self- 
castigation, love an unacted caress, and analogous state- 
ments are made about other emotions. The education of 
the feelings is based on the fact that the idea originally 
associated with the emotion may be changed for another 
idea. The function of the emotions in school is to fur- 
ther continuity of activity, the education of the emotions 
in school should be indirect and the unduly deep ones re- 
duced wherever possible. The connection between emo- 
tion and the sexual life of the child brings up the ques- 
tion of physical self-abuse, the dangers of which are ex- 
plained and the question of mental self-abuse, which is 
too common among children in forms least suspected by 
teacher and parent. The education of the will is merely 
the removing of obstacles existing in the unconscious. 



CHAPTER IX 

CONCLUSION. MEDICAL ORIGIN 

A SPECIAL significance attaches to the fact that the 
strictly scientific method of studying the unconscious has 
come from medical research. The first authoritative 
result was reached by a neurologist in searching for the 
causes of a nervous disease. Having found it in the un- 
conscious wishes, the unperceived tensions existing in the 
mind of his patient, he was quick to see the application of 
his discovery to all phases of mental life, normal as 
well as abnormal. For the only difference between 
normal and abnormal is the fact that the so-called 
abnormal person finds a difficulty in living in society. 
Society shows him up for abnormal only by setting stand- 
ards of adaptation to which he is for some reason unable 
to measure up. 

Education is the conscious effort on the part of society 
to lift as many individuals as possible up to the standard 
which it has set. Therefore any knowledge of the rea- 
sons why some do not naturally rise to or above such 
standards is welcome, no matter what the source. And 
any knowledge of the means for such an uplifting of 
the individuals who are below the average is doubly 
welcome. 

In this connection It may be of Interest to give a slight 

321 



322 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

idea of the methods pursued by the medical psychologists 
in the cure of certain nervous diseases. 



Medical Psychoanalysis 

Those physicians who confine their practice exclusively 
to cases where psychoanalysis is available for the cure 
of diseases of a nervous character have summed up their 
work by saying that at bottom it is really a process of 
educating the adult to adapt himself to the requirements 
of his environment, an adaptation which has been unsuc- 
cessful. The failure to adapt has been the cause of the 
disease which the patient has sought the physician for the 
purpose of curing. The methods of these physicians, 
which in the rarest cases include the prescription of 
drugs, vary within certain limits, as it must according to 
the mental development of the physician himself. Osten- 
sibly the method is to evoke, by patient listening, the 
apparently trivial thoughts which the patient may have 
during the hours which he spends with the physician, so 
that the general trends of the unconscious craving may be 
diagnosed, and the appropriate counsel given. Some 
physicians give advice about concrete matters concerning 
the patient at every sitting, thinking that otherwise the 
seance may have no point for the patient, while others 
will receive and listen to the patient for weeks at a time 
without offering a single suggestion, on the theory that 
knowledge which is applied by one person to the surface 
of another is merely superficial and has no dynamic value, 
which is gained solely by the patient's making his own 
inferences. In one sense, as has been already said, it is 



MEDICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS 323 

a physical impossibility to tell anybody anything, parti- 
cularly about himself. 

But the general aim is to educate in the sense of bring- 
ing out all the capabilities of the patient in any and every 
line, so that after mature reflection, and the necessary 
spiritual growth, which time alone can effect, he will be 
in a position to make the correct reactions to the stimuli 
which constitute his environment. 

The gist of the lesson which the patient learns is what 
he is actually doing in his everyday life, for on a knowl- 
edge of what he is doing must be based the determina- 
tion to do what he ought to do. It is always found that 
the patient is unwittingly doing something that is not ap- 
proved either by himself or society. What he should 
do is what society, in the broadest sense of that term, re- 
quires of him. He may think that he is doing exactly 
what he is required to do, but in this case he is de- 
ceiving himself and the self-deception has to be revealed 
to the patient by the physician. This implies that con- 
science is the determining factor in the origin of many 
diseases of nervous character, the conflict between what 
the patient thinks he is doing and what he thinks he ought 
to do being the crux of the whole situation. When the 
patient is deceiving himself both about what he ought 
to do and about what he is doing, it is evident that he 
is far from adapting himself to his environment in the 
most constructively social way. 

A concrete illustration * of the way in which the pa- 
tient suffers from a conflict between himself and society 
is that of the woman who became a nervous wreck from 
thinking that the people of the suburban town where she 

*Frmk, Morbid Fears and Compulsions, page 157. 



324 THE CHILD'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

lived after the death of her husband were unfriendly and 
critical to her because they thought she was a designing 
widow, and was making eyes at every available man. 
She had to be taught that in the first place she was actually 
at heart what is called a designing widow, as she really 
wished to get married again; and then, on top of that, she 
had to be taught that it was no crime to get married 
again, anyway. This rather amusing way of putting 
what was a source of intense conflict to the unhappy wo- 
man is a good instance of how the aim of psychoanalysis 
is to make us see ourselves as others see us with the im- 
plication that when we do we shall react as others do in 
the same circumstances, and that if we do so act we shall 
be free from the conflict which is the cause of our misery. 
And our misery, however purely mental it may have been 
in the beginning, sooner or later, if our warped view of 
ourselves and our relations with others is not corrected, 
will become a physical ill, which will respond but weakly 
to physical means of remedy, as it is really of mental 
origin and can be eradicated only from the mental 
side. 

So that the aim of psychoanalysis, whether it be the 
corrective work of the physician or the educator, is the 
same. It is to unite the Individual with his kind. It may 
be said that there are many people in the world who are 
perfectly united with their kind but who are not educated. 
But it will have to be admitted that such people are really, 
in a broad sense, better educated than the college man 
with the highest degree, who cannot in spite of it be happy 
himself or live happily with his neighbours. He may be 
educated, but he has only a specialized form of training 
and has not the education which Is of most worth. 



FEB 141949 



MEDICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS 325 

I hope that if I can call the attention of my fellow- 
teachers to the very much more social way of looking at 
their calling which the psychoanalytic view presents, I 
shall be able to make the work of the teacher more effi- 
cient, his relations with parents and children more profit- 
able and his position in the present social organism more 
valued than it is. 



FINIS 



INDEX 



Abberations, mental, 133 

Acceptance, 65 

Act and word, 43 

Activity, conscious, 4 

Acts, symptomatic, 51, 83 
thoughtless, 200 

Aim of Education, 58, 59, 63, 67, 
71, 73. 75, 85, H4, 126, 127, 
151, 172, 189, 196, 224, 225, 232, 

312 

Ambivalence, 93, 134, 135 

Amplitude of consciousness, 225 

Analogy, 140 

Anger, 94, 291, 292 

Antivivisectionism, 91, 143, 149 

Anxiety, 139 

Art, 150 

Attraction, 22 

Authoritative attitude of teachers, 

250 
Aversion, 144, 240 
Aware, becoming, 76 

Beauty, 159 
Blame, 124 
Blunder, 5 
Bully, 156 

Censor, 82, 107 
Children, neurotic, 61 
Compensation, 91, 130, 134, 202 
Competition, 90 
Complex, 82, 183, 317 
Confidence, 174 
Conflict, 53, 275, 295, 324 
Conscience, 9, 135, 323 
Conscious and unconscious inter- 
play, 49 

action, 52 

control, 57 
Consciousness, entrance of, in evo- 
lution, 74 

stream of, 137 



Conservation of energy, 17 
Control, instinctive, 18 
Craving, 189 
Crawford, 32 
Creation, of mind, i8i 

reproductive, 85, 196, 239 
Creativeness, 24 
Criticizing, 158, 228 
Curiosity, sexual, 184 

Day-dreaming, 189 

Democracy in education, 214 

Deportment, 160 

Descriptive psychology, 100 

Desire, 15, 139, 144, 226 

Dewey, 58 

Directed thinking, 128, 153, 188, 225 

Disguise of wishes, 16 

Dishonesty, 160 

Dislike, 20 

Displacement, 136, 138, 155, 317 

Doubt, 188 

Dream, 46, 82 

Dynamic psychology, 100 

Eccentricity, 140 
Education, aim of, see Aim 

of the future, 86 
Efficiency, 29 
Emotions, 94, 96, 131, 141, 282, 295, 

303, 306, 310^ 
Energy, conservation of, 17 
Environment, 224 
Epiphenomenon, 76 
Error, 24 

Estimation, unconscious, 19 
Excuses, II 

Exhibitionism, 92, 146, 148, 203 
Extraversion, 305 

Fate attitude, 242 
Fault-finding, 158 
Favourite children, 176 



327 



328 



INDEX 



Fear, 94, 183, 226, 377 
Feminists, 142 
Flight, 127 
Foreconscious, 49 
Freud, 261 
Furtive glance, 20, 188 

Gratification of unconscious wishes, 

17 
Grief, 296 

Habit of victory, 39 
Hate, 95 
Homosexual, 22 
Hope, 298 

Idealism, 288 
Identification, 111, 127 
Image, mental, 102 
Impressions, early, 173 
Inaccessible children, 68 
Inconsistency, 73 
Individual attention, 129 
Infantility, 92, 134 
Inferiority, 201 
Instincts, 195 
Interest, 244, 308 

Interplay of conscious and uncon- 
scious, 55 
Introjection, 120 
Introversion, 190, 288, 300, 314 
Irrelevance, 302 
Irritation, 126 

James, William, 287 
Joy, 294 

Libido, 89, 136, 137, 306, 307, 308, 

310, 317 
Lie. 35 
Logic, 36 

Love, 95, 99, 126, 293, 297 
Lynching, 143 

Maieutic method, 251 
Masochism, 89, 266, 300 
Masturbation, 313 

mental, 314, 315 
Mechanism of blame, 124 
Mechanisms, 99 

Medical origin of psychoanalysis, 
321 



Mental vs. conscious, 13 
Methods more elastic, 242 
Mind, creation of, 181 
Misinformation, 187 
Mother-infant attitude, 241 

Negative, psychological, 37 
Neurotic, 60, 238, 295 
Normal, 62 
Numbers as states of mind, 27 

Omission, unconscious, 7 
Only child, 176 
Onomatopoeia, 28, 108 
Over-compensation, 140 
Over-emotionality, 303 

Pain, 90, 123 

Parents, education of, 114 

influence of, 176 
Partial trends, 89 
Perfection of nature, 223 
Permutations, 40, 42 
Personal act, the most, 13, 18 
Phantasy, 80, 315 
" Phantoms of past pins," 275 
Phobia, 17 
Piano playing, 69 
Primeval standards, 22 
Productive creation, 196, 239 
Projection, 118, 15.6 
Psychical environment, 224 
Psychoanalysis, point of view of, 
4, 286 

medical, 65, 237, 279, 321, 324 
Psychological negative, 37 
Psychology, 130 

Question, 229, 251, 264 
" Quiet talk," 302 
Quiz, 228 

Rapport, 228 

Rationalization, 163 

Reality, 206, 210, 212, 240 

Recitation, 216 

Regression, 316 

Relations between thoughts and 

things, 25 
Religion and sex, 236 
Repression, 60, 65, 208, 283 
Reproach, 156 



INDEX 



329 



Reproduction, 106 
Reproductive creation, 196, 239 
Resistance and transference, 248 
Reverie, 80 
Rhythm, 28, 205, 255, 258 

Sadism, 89, 143, 146 
Selection of words, 26 
Self-abuse, 313 

mental, 314 
Self and world, 123, 126 
Sex and religion, 236 
Sexual curiosity, 184, 298, 312 

education, 298 
Similarity, 109 
Society, 148 
Socratic method, 251 
Sorrow, 294 

" Spirit is willing," 33 ff. 
Split between wishes, 19 
Statement, 35 

Sublimation, 89, 146, 195, 227, 307 
Substitution, 136, 297 
Superiority, no 
Surgery, 143 
Symptomatic acts, 51 

Teacher, future function of, 234 
Tensions, 20, 72, 191, 205, 255, 257 
Thought, 50, 106 
Thoughtless acts, 200 
Thoughts, source of, 80, 81, 197 



Transference, 248, 270 

negative, 275 
Transformation, adaptive, of en- 
ergy, 151, 189 
Trends, partial, 89 
Truth, 159 

Unconscious, the, 49, 105 
action, 53 

antagonism, 228, 229, 267 
desire, 143, 226 
emotions, 23 
estimation, 19 
extent of, 14 
factor, 13, 23, 57 
fluidity of, 5 
idea, 199 
mental activity, 2 
not oriented^ 161 
permutations, 40 
resistance, 249 
thought, 52, 57 
Unconscious- wish, 86, 262, 264, 266 
wishes, gratification of, 17, 168 

for creation, 84 

as tendons, 191 

Wells, H. G., 151, 261 
Will, 316: 

Wish, 8, 16, 50, 72, 252, 260 
Wish psychology, 15 
World as part of body, 290 








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